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Me searching for fanfics after watching a series/film/videogame/reading a book and becoming obsessed with that character:
to court a princess
- gwayne hightower x betrothed!reader
a princess wed to a dashing knight should be living a fairytale—but gwayne hightower is also the son of the schemer who would soon plunge the realm into civil war. how long can you resist his charms... when he proves time and again that his affection is as genuine as his honor?
genre/warnings: arranged marriage, unrequited love, hurt/comfort, yearning, jealousy, mentions of injury & blood, fluff and lots of kissing afterwards, sunshine!gwayne and grumpy!reader, political drama, targaryen!reader (reader is rhaenyra's younger sister), spoilers! takes place in season 1 of house of the dragon
notes: gif by @/bladeofdreadfort. wc. 4.5k ! hotd s3 is finally here and so does my man gwayne <3 i really loved writing this so i hope you’ll enjoy it!
For the longest time, Gwayne had known that the matter of his marriage were not his to ponder. As the son of the Hand of the King, his future was a tapestry woven by him in a series of cunning, calculated moves.
Yet, he had never truly expected to be betrothed to you—a princess of the realm.
The young princess for the queen’s brother. By every measure, it was a masterful stroke of politics and his father had once again outdone himself. After binding his sister to the king, it was now his turn to seek the heart of the realm’s most coveted maiden after the Princess Rhaenyra.
However, to Gwayne, you were more than just a political alliance. You were a paragon of beauty, the girl haunting his dreams, the princess who has stolen his heart—
But seven hells, were you also one hard lady to entice.
Every charming smile he threw your way was met with an arched, unimpressed brow. Every poetic compliment he rehearsed tasted like ash and shattered against your coldness. You didn’t swoon like the ladies at the tourney grounds, nor did you soften at his obvious attempts to woo you.
Instead, you looked at him as if you could see right through the nervous man underneath.
Your assessing gaze was currently fixed on him from the shade of the courtyard gallery. Down in the dirt, Gwayne was sweating through his padded doublet, trying his absolute best to look formidable as his sword clashed against his squire’s shield—because he knew you were watching.
He has to look good. Your wedding was in three weeks, so he was fighting to impress—determined to give you a show of how your betrothed was as dashing as the realm claimed him to be.
With theatrical flair, he executed an aggressive sequence before driving his squire back with a heavy strike, deftly sweeping the poor lad’s legs out from under him, and sending him sprawling into the dirt with a breathless thud.
Breathing heavily, Gwayne smoothly rested the point of his sword near the fallen boy’s chest in a classic pose of victory.
“You are just dead,” he declared with his signature grin, before turning to where you were.
You leaned against the stone balustrade, looking down at him with an expression of mild, patronizing amusement. He flashed you a hopeful, boyish grin that begged for even a shred of your approval.
And as if deciding to grace him with your presence, you descended down the stone stairs. Gwayne’s smile widened, and he met you halfway as you reached the bottom.
Ignoring the staring stableboys, he dipped his head and took your hand, placing a kiss on it.
“Princess,” he greeted, his dark blue eyes meeting yours with an excited crinkle.
“An impressive display, Ser Gwayne,” you replied, smoothly pulling your hand back from his grasp. He was giddy, about to thank you for the compliment, when—
“I must commend your passion. It takes a truly remarkable knight to exert such effort against a boy half his size who is actively paid to lose to him.”
Gwayne winced slightly, but the grin quickly returned to his face, refusing to let your sharp tongue deter him.
“A knight, no matter the age, must practice for all manner of foes. It shall be a good lesson for my squire to learn,” he countered softly. He had always been a naturally courteous man, but he had been practicing an extra measure of gentleness ever since the betrothal was announced, even when you remained frosty.
He hoped that you would recognize it—that you would see he was willing to bend his pride just for you.
However, you merely lifted your chin higher, your eyes flashing with a challenge.
“Is that so? My, what a chivalrous soul you are. I suppose I shall sleep soundly knowing you are defending the realm with your immense prowess and formidable army of squires.”
One thing he could never truly understand, though... he hadn’t asked for this match any more than you had, yet why did you look at him as you would a liar?
And it hurts because... he remembers how the more innocent, younger you, who had wiped blood from his face, hadn’t looked at him as you do now.
“We are to be married in no less than a moon,” he reminded you, still with a smile. “Tell me, Princess... what must a man do to earn a genuine compliment from his bride?”
You held his gaze for a beat, letting the silence stretch just long enough to watch the slight twitch in his jaw. Then, a devastatingly sweet smile graced your lips as you tilted your head.
“Compliments are but wind, my good ser. If we are to marry soon anyways, what use would flattering you with empty words do?”
Gwayne let out a defeated chuckle. “I shall just continue striving to become a man worthy of your hand, then.”
You had just insulted him and mocked his swordsmanship in the same breath, and yet, somehow, he still found himself tethered to you still.
What a fool he was.
He didn’t give up just like that, of course. Gifts was also Gwayne’s language of affection.
He had commissioned a seven-pointed star necklace for you in Oldtown, crafted from the finest silver and diamond. He had watched his late mother and sister find such profound comfort in it, and so he had believed it would make a fine gift for you.
Yet, now that he presented the gleaming jewelry to you, you were rendered silent.
“You do not like it,” he realized, a note of disappointment building through his usual confidence.
“It is exquisite. Truly,” you started, your voice gentle but lacking the reverence he had anticipated. “But... you must not expect me to wear it often.”
“Is it the design? If it offends your sensibilities, I can have it redone, or—”
“I assure you, I know your intentions are kind,” you looked at him, a certain sternness in your eyes. “It is just a matter of preference, is all. I treasure this necklace from my mother rather greatly, and wearing it is how I keep her close to me.”
The tragic death of Queen Aemma was not so easily forgotten, least of all when you resembled her so much. Gwayne’s smile faltered, the enthusiasm in his eyes dimming when his gaze found the sapphire necklace of Arryn falcon on your neck, a heirloom passed down.
He looked down at the silver star resting in the wooden box, suddenly finding it so plain, before forcing himself to meet your gaze again.
“I just want you to know that... you are in my thoughts, constantly,” he murmured, his gaze rising to meet yours again. “Whenever I see something I consider beautiful, I think of you. I want you to have it. You should know I have no underlying intentions other than that.”
You gave him an appreciative nod, pursing your lips together. “Your kind thoughts are much appreciated.”
So he had failed, again. Sigh.
What better way to impress your betrothed and prove to the entire realm that you were worthy of her hand than by claiming victory at the King’s nameday tourney?
Even you would at least bestow a real smile upon him. That was what Gwayne was after.
Or at least, it was until his gaze drifted to the edge of the battlement grounds where the knights were assembling. There, he saw you.
With Criston Cole.
The sight struck him. You, who usually looked at him with indifference, were attentive, your eyes bright in a way Gwayne had never managed to make them. Cole, in turn, had a reserved smile, his attention entirely locked onto you.
It could have been anyone but Criston—the Dornishman!—Cole. Why him?!
A sharp spike of resentment flared in his chest. He decided right then and there that this cannot stand, and marched towards you both.
“Good day, Ser Criston,” Gwayne greeted with a forced smile, his voice dripping with a courtly cheer that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Cole returned his greeting, and he turned to you then. “My betrothed, fancy to have found you here. You shouldn’t have to sully yourself with the dirt.”
“I was merely wishing Ser Criston luck in the lists.” As always, the corners of your lips curled into that faux smile whenever facing him. “The competition looks fierce today.”
What about him? You hadn’t thought of wishing him, your own groom, luck?
“Fierce for some, mayhaps,” Gwayne nodded, his smile sharpening as he took another step forward, deliberately cutting off Criston Cole’s line of sight to you. He reached out, his gauntleted hand gently but firmly taking yours.
“But I sure do not fear a crowd of knights of modest beginnings and second sons. And I have hoped that I might find you in the stands later, and you would bestow upon me your favor to assure me of my victory.”
He looked down at you, the forced arrogance in his eyes momentarily cracked. He wanted you to look at him the way you had just looked at Cole, really.
But cruel, relentless you never granted it so easily.
“Your romantic sensibilities are commendable, ser.” You let out a soft sigh, as if lamenting, “but victory is still guaranteed by skill and the favor of the Seven, and not merely from a scrap of silk.”
The rejection was subtle, but in the presence of Criston Cole, it felt like a public execution.
“It is said even a scrap of favor from one’s bride can turn the tide of many battles,” Gwayne replied, his voice dropping an octave as the last traces of courtly cheer evaporated. “Unless, of course, your favor has already been promised to someone else?”
His eyes flicked towards Cole, searching for a reason to draw steel before the tourney even began. And that Dornish wretch had the gall to look at him in the eyes and retorted:
“May the best knight win, ser.”
Your betrothed had become terribly displeased and you knew it. Your hollow smile deepened, you stepped forward and smoothly slid your hand into the crook of his arm.
“No, no. You are free to ask me for it later, of course, my dear.”
Gwayne knew better that the honeyed words held no real affection. Yet, like a moth drawn to a flame, he couldn’t help but fall for it each and every time.
You held his leash, and you knew exactly how far you could play with and stretch it. But as he looked at you, a quiet ache settled in his soul.
Is it truly so wrong of him to seek your heart? How much longer would he have to endure this torment, giving everything while his affections remained completely unreturned?
“From today to the day we breathe our last, all that I am is yours.”
That was the first thing he told you when the betrothal was announced. In a den of vipers, Gwayne Hightower was entirely his own man.
He didn’t possess the calculating ambition of his father, who viewed every living soul as a piece in his game of thrones. Nor was he prudent like his sister, Queen Alicent, whose motto in life was duty and sacrifice.
You know that. You really knew that your chosen betrothed was everything but unkind. He was everything the songs promised a knight should be— genuine, posh, with a touch of arrogance that made him charming. He held you in high regard, and his attempts to make an impression on you were sweet.
Despite how you behaved around him, the truth was... it took everything in you not to fall for Ser Gwayne Hightower.
But he is still Otto’s son. You hated the Lord Hand with every fiber of your being—the man’s thirst for power had already forced your childhood companion Alicent into your father’s bed, turned your sister Rhaenyra into a scheming cynic, and your own betrothal to Gwayne was just another piece of his grand design.
However, watching the tourney unfold from the royal box, your thoughts swirled with guilt and anxiety. In the end, he hadn’t asked for your favor at all. Ironically, his sudden silence unsettled you far more than his persistence ever had.
Looking back on your interactions, the weight of your biting marks pressed heavily against your chest. You had rejected him so many times, using your faux smiles and sharp wit as shields. Every time you remembered the look of hurt that crossed his face before he masked it with a patient smile, a fresh wave of guilt washed over you.
Did he deserve to be punished just for pursuing you? Was it fair to make him pay for his father’s sins?
Down in the dirt, Gwayne rode beautifully, unseating two seasoned knights from the Reach and splitting lances with a Lannister to thunderous applause from the crowd. For a moment, watching his silver and green armor gleam in the sunlight, a spark of pride flared in your chest.
Then, Ser Criston Cole rode onto the field.
The tension between the two men was palpable even from the high stands. They charged— one lance shattered, then a second. By the third pass, it was clear it was a matter of pride.
And on the fourth pass, the collision was catastrophic.
With a terrifying crack that echoed across the grounds, Cole’s lance struck dead center. Gwayne was violently unseated, flung from his saddle to hit the earth with a sickening crash.
A collective gasp sucked the air from the stands. Through the rising dust, you saw your betrothed lying completely still. Cole’s lance hadn’t just broken— it had compromised his armor. His steel breastplate was shattered to pieces, the shards visibly lodged into his chest, dark blood already pooling through the fractures.
Your breath hitched, your hand flying to your mouth in horror.
Six years ago, a similar scene had paralyzed your heart the very same way. Blind to the rules of propriety, you bolted from the royal box. Pushing past lords and ladies, you sprinted down into the arena—desperate to reach him.
The maesters and several squires had already swarmed him, unbuckling the undamaged pieces of his armor with hurried hands. Gwayne was propped up against a wooden barrier, half-conscious, his head lolling to the side as his eyes struggled to hold focus.
“Will he be alright?” your voice cracked, almost shrill, the composed facade of a princess shattered as you hovered over the maesters working on him. “Tell me he will be alright.”
“The steel hasn’t pierced the heart, Princess, but we must move him to immediately to extract the shards,” one of them mumbled, wrapping a temporary cloth around the wound to stem the bleeding.
Gwayne let out a low, guttural groan at the pressure, his eyelids fluttering. Through the haze of pain, he recognized your voice. He knew you were there.
Driven by a sudden, overwhelming surge to comfort him, you dropped to your knees beside him. Your hands were trembling as you reached out, using the hem of your sleeve to wipe away the grime and blood that smeared his pale cheek.
But before your fingers could trace his jawline, Gwayne’s gauntleted hand came up. With a sudden burst of remaining strength, he swatted your hand away—
“Do not touch me,” he rasped.
The words were raw and bitter, dripping with an icy venom you had never heard from him before.
. . .
Gwayne refused to meet your gaze. He pressed his eyes shut, his jaw clenched so tightly the bone practically strained against his skin.
It wasn’t just the physical agony tearing him apart. It was the suffocating, absolute humiliation.
He had lost. He had been unseated and laid low in the dirt in front of the entire realm—and worse, in front of Criston Cole. He couldn’t bear to see the pity in your eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at the woman he loved and see confirmation that he was exactly what you always thought of him: unworthy.
“I’m— fine,” he choked out then. “So... go back to the Keep.”
It was funny how this was the same thing that had happened to him six years ago, during the Heir’s Tourney. He had been brutally unseated by Daemon Targaryen then, and just like now, you had come running to him, wiping the blood from his broken nose with your kerchief.
He fell in love with you then... and he has been in love with you ever since.
The girl holding his heart was a princess, and he had never dared to hope for more, never dreaming his conniving father would actually arrange your hand for him. He had thought it a blessing.
But his pursuit of you the past three moons had yielded nothing but a bitter truth— you despised him.
So he preferred to choke on the blinding pain, to let it consume him entirely, rather than suffer the indignity of your comfort.
You are in love with him.
You had spent weeks trying to resent the circumstances that led to your marriage with Otto Hightower’s son, reminding yourself over and over that he had fractured your family, sowing seeds of rebellion that would break once Alicent’s son came to age, and it would spell disaster upon you all—
But the wounded knight with broken nose six years ago had long since owned a part of your heart, and one week without Gwayne Hightower persistent on your heel, you had found yourself... sad.
“Mrawgh...”
“I’m not lonely,” you mumbled petulantly, brushing a hand against Grey Ghost’s silver scales as the dragon curled up, blinking his golden eyes shut to rest.
To occupy yourself, you spent the days with your dragon in the Dragonpit. Tending to Grey Ghost made the long hours pass faster— he was a recluse and not keen on flying often, but his quiet presence matched your somber mood.
Leaving him to his slumber, you walked away lost in your thoughts, entirely failing to notice how slippery the stone ledge had become.
Your foot caught on a heavy iron ring embedded in the floor. The world tilted as you stumbled backwards, losing your footing entirely. You braced for a painful impact against the stone floor, but a pair of strong arms wrapped securely around your waist, arresting your descent.
A sharp, ragged gasp left your savior’s lips. As you stabilized, you realized your hands had instinctively braced against his chest—pressing right over the bandages of the fresh wound.
“Steady there,” the redhead managed, a strained smile tight on his lips as he gently set you back on your feet. His green tunic made you realize who he was—
“Gwayne!” you breathed. Your hands hovered over him, trembling, almost terrified to touch him again. “Why are you—your wound! I didn’t mean to—”
“I am fine, truly,” he assured you, his voice softening as he offered a warm, comforting smile. “It is but a scratch, Princess. It takes more than a clumsy tumble from you to injure me.”
Just like a hundred times before, Gwayne Hightower sought you out. You could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead and how he looked pale still—
From today to the day we breathe our last, all that I am is yours.
“You are supposed to be resting!” Your voice rose despite yourself. “Why are you here?!”
This wasn’t what you wanted to tell him. You wanted to tell him a lot of other things! Like he was a fool, and that you would forbid him to enter the lists once you two were wed, that you couldn’t bear the thought of losing him—
His blue eyes crinkled with that familiar kindness as he reached out, softly tucking a stray strand of your loose hair behind your ear.
“If I wasn’t here, then you would take a fall.” His voice a soothing balm to your frayed nerves. “I can’t very well let my betrothed hurt herself before our big day, can I?”
This was the first time since King Viserys announced your betrothal three moons ago that you looked genuinely worried for him. It made something inside him burst with joy, even if it was tinged with a bitter aftertaste.
Gwayne’s thumb gently brushed across the back of your hand that was still pressed against his chest.
“Tell me... Is this the only way I could truly have your attention? Must I be grievously injured, a step away from Death’s door, for you to look at me like this?”
Your eyes widened by a fraction. Precious, precious girl. He chuckled softly, a teasing glint brightened his eyes.
Just this once, could he be allowed to be just a little bit cruel?
“Even if you keep looking at me with those beautiful eyes...” he whispered, his smile turning a little wistful, “...my heart might just run out, one of these days.”
He gave you one last, kind smile—a look of affection that no longer held expectations, or reeked of the politics that bound your families. Then, he gently gripped your hand, pulling it away from him before turning on his heel to leave you to your own devices.
When your fingers fell limp into the cold air, a stinging realization pierced through you like a dagger:
Is this how he feels? Is this what he endures every time I evade him? How has he survived it over and over?
As his warmth retreated into the shadows of the Dragonpit, something sharp tore deep inside your chest.
You didn’t want him to go. The walls you had spent weeks building to protect your heart against the Hightower name crumbled into dust. Your eyes burned with tears that blurred his retreating figure.
He was nearly out of the pit when you gathered your skirts, abandoning your pride, and ran after him.
“Ser Gwayne!”
Before he could turn back, you lunged, throwing your pride and your fears to the wind. You crashed into his back, your arms wrapping tightly around his waist, burying your face against his spine. He stiffened, almost flinching—
But then he heard you sob.
“Princess...?” he asked softly. His tone shifted, turning from startled confusion to a protective concern as he carefully turned around within your embrace. He reached up, gently tilting your chin up, only to find your cheeks flushed and wet with tears.
Realizing you were truly, genuinely weeping, Gwayne’s breath hitched in his throat.
He didn’t think. He didn’t let past rejections dictate him. He immediately wrapped his arms around you, pulling you close against his uninjured side.
“Shh, please do not weep,” he said in your ear, his own voice suddenly thick with emotion as he rocked you slightly. “Darling... please.”
Darling. Why did the word sound so devastatingly sweet in your ears? As you clung to him, you realized with absolute certainty that you wanted him to call you that for the rest of your days.
As he held you, feeling the warmth of your hands anchoring yourself to him, the pieces finally fell into place:
Has she... returned my feelings?
When your sobs finally quieted and your breathing turned calmer, you gently pulled back just enough to look up at him. Your eyes met his, and an ache settled in your chest.
He was such a beautiful man. Red hair, blue eyes, with ghost of dimples— still the very same wounded knight you had secretly harbored affections for with all those years ago.
Driven by a clear wave of clarity, you didn’t wait for him to speak. Reaching up, you stood on your toes and pulled him down by his collar—
—and pressed your lips to his.
Gwayne went rigid at your sudden boldness. But as your fingers tangled into his soft hair, any lingering shock vanished. With a low groan, he leaned into you, capturing your mouth in a kiss that felt like the bursting of a dam.
He drank in your sighs, his lips moving against yours with a desperate longing, as if he were trying to memorize the taste of you. He pulled you closer, his hands tilting your head back, anchoring you to him.
“You really are—” he growled against your mouth, his breath hot and ragged, “my utter undoing, Princess.”
Before the words could even fully register, you gasped as he gathered you up and hoisted you backwards, setting you down onto the broad stone railing.
Gwayne stepped between your thighs, pinning you to the ledge as his mouth descended on yours once more, even more ravenous than before. The kiss became a blur of lips, tongues, and breathless gasps—
His hands left your face to map the lines of your body, his palm sliding down the column of your throat to the curve of your shoulders. In his mind’s eye, he was already stripping away the heavy, suffocating layers of your gown, picturing the soft, aching swell of your breasts and the intoxicating dip of your waist.
In less than a week... as soon as you swear your oaths before the Seven, he would be graced by that sight.
Gwayne dragged his lips down from your mouth, leaving a trail of scorching kisses along your jawline before burying his face in the crook of your neck.
“Ser Gwayne—” your voice came hitched, and that what brought him back to reality.
He bit softly at the sensitive skin there, swallowing the fire that was about to consume him. When he finally pulled away to breathe, his lips lingered against yours.
“Well, you did kiss me first, Princess,” Gwayne murmured, his eyes twinkling, voice delightfully raspy as his arms settled loosely around your waist. “If I had known a broken rib would finally get you to kiss me, I would have marched up to Grey Ghost and asked him to toss me by the tail weeks ago.”
“Please don’t,” you giggled, circling your arms around his neck.
“Ah, but think of the romance— a dashing knight, battered and bruised, crawling back from the Dragonpit just to collapse into his bride’s arms.”
A breathless laugh escaped your lips, giving way to a very sweet, genuine smile. To Gwayne Hightower, this was the prettiest you had ever been, and his heart throbbed.
Oh, so she does, he realized, a quiet reverence settling into his soul. She does return my affections.
Gwayne leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, finally certain that his heart was safe in your hands.
“You might not know it,” he whispered, “but I have been in love with you for a very long time.”
You looked up at him, your eyes bright with unshed tears, and he met your gaze with a look of such devotion it stole the breath from your lungs.
“So let me say this once again. From before, now and until the day we breathe our last, all that I am... is yours.”
In that moment, you couldn’t have known that the realm would soon be plunged into a senseless civil war, pitting your sister against his in a dance of dragons and blood. You couldn’t have foreseen the ashes, the betrayals, or the heavy price the Hightower green and the Targaryen black would have to pay.
None of that matters right now. All you wanted was to lose yourself in his embrace and savor the fragile perfection of your wedding to the man of your dreams... for as long as it would last.
"y/n ran her hand through her silky, long blonde hair while she looked her skinny and small body in the mirror-" Bitch who?
screaming, crying, throwing up. the babygirl mama's boy to tragic death pipeline is too strong
Bedrest
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.
Warnings: 18+ SMUT hurt/comfort, handjob, oral (blowjob), eventual smut, near-death aftermath, medical treatment, injuries/blood, married couple shenanigans, excessive flirting, Jace Velaryon lobbying campaign
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.
to be alone with you
- ser gwayne hightower x rhaenyra’s daughter!reader
synopsis. Ser Gwayne Hightower is tasked with escorting you, the sole daughter of the newly anointed Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, across the Reach and into the Crownlands as part of a deal securing amnesty for House Hightower. Along the way, you realize you do not hate him as much as you thought. contents. smut, angst, slowburnish, reader is rhaenyra’s eldest daughter (around the same age as aegon) and silverwing’s rider and is so spoiled that she has never seen a baby chick before, enemies to lovers, mutual pining, grief, show elements but also canon divergence, sex pollen, oral (f recieving), fingering, p in v, loss of virginity, multiple orgasms, cum eating, bath sex, reader is comically oblivious at some points, gwayne needs you so bad a/n. 13.5k words wow big day for me, spoilers for the show?, inspired by a request i got (thank you very much anon wherever you are), inspired by the film lady chatterly’s lover at some points, takes place directly after jace dies and rhaenyra takes the throne
It was a glum day, the day you were told your brother was dead, and you were alone with the usurper’s uncle. The dread—that feeling that something was just wrong—settled deep in your stomach before the words came out of his mouth.
The Hightower army had found you many months prior, nearly deceased following an attack on your dragon, Silverwing. You had told her to fly home to Dragonstone, to leave you, and you have lived off of the hope that she made it back safe.
They took you as prisoner that day, and in spite of all you thought of them, they did not treat you too horribly. You believed it was like preparing a pig for slaughter, though, so you never wavered in your loyalty to your mother. You would die as a Black. It was not going to take the threat of death to let a word of the Green agenda come from your mouth.
Surprisingly, it was your cousin, Daeron, who offered you the most kindness. He was the only person you could yield to in the entire Hightower base. You could only pray he wasn’t relaying every conversation you’d had back to the Lord Ormund Hightower.
Everyone else treated you like you were common. Specifically Ser Gwayne Hightower.
He was rude—and vain—and arrogant. He was irritating. When he would try to make conversation, you would always end up in a fight. And it was just your luck for him to be the one instructed to take you on a multiple-week-long journey from the Reach and back to your rightful home in the Red Keep.
He was the one to tell you that your mother had taken King’s Landing back. You assume your mother saw it fit to have the Queen Dowager’s brother be the one to accompany you, because maybe she has something in store for him when you make it there. Perhaps a beheading? He could do without the ability to speak.
Then he was the one to tell you that you would join her in King’s Landing. That you were finally going home. It was the only thing to come from his mouth that made you joyful.
You overheard chatter that by you departing the Reach as soon as the letter was received, and by you making it back unharmed, House Hightower would be granted something close to immunity for their role in the war. You knew it was something a lie. Your mother and stepfather would never let the Green beasts live with what they had done—not only to you, but to her son too. To your mother herself.
The thought of what your mother might be doing to the Dowager Queen now gave you anxiety from being excluded. You should expect that they’ll be calling for Daeron’s capture too, though perhaps you will be able to put in a good word for him—get him sent to the Wall instead of hanged.
Speaking of Daeron, he was already somewhere distant when you had finished gathering your belongings, even though the things you owned in the encampment were scarce. You had said your goodbyes to each other not long ago—he claimed he had to prepare for something with Lord Ormund, and that he would not be available the next morning, for your departure.
You were, as expected, ready to leave. You had wanted to lie down and rest so that the next morning would come sooner, but Ser Gwayne had called you into his tent for one final word.
“There was something else written in the letter. Something I believe should have been saved for a calm moment, such as this,” he begun, and held up the refolded parchment which illustrated the clemency that would be provided to House Hightower upon your safe return to King’s Landing. “Would you prefer to read it, or shall I?”
The glint in his eye was one of compassion. You did not like it.
You shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Proceed.”
He raised his brows, pressing his lips together before giving a heavy sigh and opening the parchment back again. The fingers that gripped either side of it seemed to waver. His eyes quickly found the line he had so desperately wanted to read.
He inhaled a heavy breath. “The Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne Jacaerys Velaryon was slain in battle against the Triarchy Fleet. He was struck down by crossbow fire alongside his dragon, Vermax, in the waters off the Gullet.”
Gwayne let his hands drop slowly, and he sealed the parchment back. He looked back up at you.
Your head was shaking back and forth. Denying his words, maybe. The movement had come naturally, and you could not stop it.
“Is this a jest?” you exhaled a small laugh, hoping it would work to quell the distress already coursing through your veins.
You knew it was not a jest.
You knew if the war did not end soon then he would die in some violent, gruesome way, but to hear it confirmed was something entirely different. To hear it confirmed by a Hightower was something worse. The primal need for the man before you dead, perhaps in such a way your own brother was killed, washed over you in an instant.
He remained silent at your question. "It pains me, though your brother's death does not alter our course,” he said instead. “We shall depart at first light.”
It pains him?
You will show him something that pains him.
There was a lengthy distance between the two of you already, but you quickly closed it as you rushed across to smack him across his cheek.
Your hand stung, yet you did not wait for his reaction. Instead, you turned on your heel and left the tent.
Jace did not hit you until the fresh air did, and you let yourself shed the tears that you had pushed back into your sockets. The tears that you could not—would not—let fall in front of the enemy.
day one
You never liked Gwayne. He was arrogant, and he would treat you as if you weren’t the daughter of the Queen—or more importantly to them, the granddaughter of King Viserys, and the niece of their usurper.
The ride up the roseroad so far had been silent. He had tried, but you did not speak a word in response. It pains me, he had said, and then he practically told you to get over it and go home! He is moronic, and conceited. It pains you that you have to make this journey with him.
If need be, you could be doing this by yourself. You’re fierce enough to ride alone—gods, you’re essentially already riding alone, Gwayne’s useless self.
Your brothers taught you to be fierce, in spite of their age. Jace had always insisted on letting you spar with them in the yard of the Red Keep, and you learned quite well from it. You certainly couldn’t beat a knight with your skills, but it had helped you gain a certain confidence that princesses tend not to have.
Aegon had never liked you practicing with them. Neither did Ser Criston. You did beat the usurper once—caught him off guard and swept him out from under his feet—which must have bruised his ego in the process, as he felt it just to push you to the ground when your back was turned right after. That earned him a clout in the ear from Ser Harwin.
You chuckle to yourself recalling the memory—specifically Aegon’s stupid face when he realized who had hit him, and more specifically when Ser Harwin did not get in trouble for it—and you notice Gwayne looking at you in your peripheral. The smile is wiped clean off of your face.
“Does something amuse you?” he mutters.
When you look over to see him, he is glowering at you, his upper lip lifted with judgment.
“I understand you may not have many fond memories to look back on when times are tiresome, but I do.” You look forward at the road ahead.
He scoffs out a laugh. “I have many fond memories.”
“Tell me one,” you counter.
All you can hear is the wind blowing through the trees. Ser Gwayne Hightower, the parentless knight, no recollections to look back on fondly.
Gwayne sucks in a breath. “I do not have to.”
“That is what I thought.” You smirk to yourself, and lightly kick the side of your horse, forcing it forward and ahead of him.
day two
You were unsure if you should speak the words you did, but they had just slipped out at a certain point.
“I take it you did not care much for Jace.” Your gaze had already been trained on the head of your horse. It seemed hard to look anywhere else.
You and Gwayne had been mindlessly trekking forward all morning, both of your eyes still heavy with the slumber that you had lacked, sleeping in an inn on top of stiff beds.
“What makes you say that, princess?” he asks.
“You are a Hightower. Your sister is the Dowager Queen. Your nephew is the usurper. You kill for them—” you look over to him. He has been staring at you the whole time, and he looks quite furious.
“I believe you will find I do not have much of a choice in the matter,” he interjects sharply.
Your head shakes. “Everyone has a choice.”
He huffs. “What do you reckon I do? Desert my army? Get caught and hanged for treason?”
“I would.” You look back at the road ahead. “I should.”
Gwayne sighs, and returns his attention to the road as well. “We both have duties, my princess. Duties one cannot simply run from once they get to be too demanding.”
“Essos is said to be nice this time of year.”
A short laugh escapes him. “Essos is said to be nice all times of the year.”
You let out a heavy, deflated sigh. “Would it not be nice? I’m sure they don’t care about who we are there. We could be free. You could be a sellsword, and I…” your thought trails off. You cannot think of what you would be somewhere like Essos.
“You could be a scribe,” Gwayne says sincerely.
You nod. “I could.”
The idea of a life in Essos, perhaps with Gwayne, seems appealing at the very moment. The lack of sleep much be getting to you.
It does seem nice. Abandoning your name, as much as you are loyal to it, could be the best decision that you have made. He seems to want the same, if you convince yourself his words weren’t just tactical, some way to earn your empathy so that you will convince your mother to spare him once you reach the Red Keep.
If the war would not come to an end with her taking of the throne, you would have to escape there yourself. And if Gwayne wanted to come with you, if he was still alive by the time you left, you might just be willing to take him with you. Silverwing—who had surely made it back to Dragonstone—was large enough to saddle two.
day three
The inn you would stay in tonight would be much worse than the last. Not only because of the stiff beds, but because of the lack of them too.
Gwayne knew of the ones that would not ask any questions while not costing all the coins in his possession. So far they had been shit, but they had been true to their history of keeping quiet with matters that did not concern them, as far as you both knew.
You would remain outside with your cloak hood pulled tight over your head and your body facing a wall until Gwayne would come fetch you to take you to the room.
He would refer to you as his squire to the innkeepers and guests who questioned your presence. If they had questioned your demeanor, he would call you reserved and paranoid. Nobody had asked anything past that, but if they did, he was prepared to tell them that you had been tormented by some childhood event.
When Gwayne had taken you to your room that night, you had not expected to be faced with a singular bed.
“Have you gotten your own room?” you had asked, not realizing until you had drawn off the cloak from your head that there was only one mattress before you.
Gwayne only shrugged. “It was all that remained. The innkeeper told me that puppeteers are traveling in town, and all seem to be staying here.”
You could not contain your fury at the thought of sharing a bed with him. Or making him sleep on the floor. “How many fucking puppeteers are there?” you demanded, body tense with unreasonable anger.
He scoffed out a laugh. “My princess, it isn’t exactly the largest inn.” He had already begun shucking off his armor, as well as ridding himself of his gambeson and chausses. “You will live. I will sleep on the floor.”
“Are you sure? Can’t you speak with the innkeeper?”
“There is no need to draw any more attention to us. And what, princess, will you be sleeping on the floor in place of me?” he mocked, already in knowledge of the answer. “Do not fret over it. I have slept in worse places.”
You were silenced at that, and had called him for help with undoing your dress. The whole ordeal was strangely impersonal. He had done it the night before, and you felt nothing. Perhaps it be the exhaustion both of you had carried.
The two of you had retired to your respective sleeping areas shortly afterward, both clad in just your smallclothes.
Later that night, you found yourself wide awake, shivering in the relentless cold that seemed to break in past the shut windows.
Gwayne had been sleeping on the floor furthest from where you were lying on the bed. You assumed he was sleeping as well, but it was strangely silent. You had expected to hear the soft breathing of someone consumed by their slumber, though all you heard was the whistling of wind outside.
And your heart still held unpleasant sympathy for where he had been forced to rest. If your thoughts were true, he was not sleeping at all.
“Ser?” you whisper.
“Is something wrong?” you hear from below.
You smile at his voice. No, at being right. You do not smile at his presence, you smile because you like being right. You rolled over then, the mattress groaning beneath you, to stare at the dim expanse of the side where he lay.
“Are you comfortable there, on the floor?” you question, smile piercing through your words.
He scoffs. “You jest, princess, but I have no doubt that this floor is just as soft as the mattress you lay on.”
You were hit with a flurry of breathless laughter at his words. It must be your lack of sleep. You could hear him chuckle too after some point, but both of you had been slowly silenced as the seconds passed until you could only hear the commotion outside again.
Perhaps you should invite him to sleep alongside you. You are not without mercy. Of course, it would be strictly unromantic, not like how a wife and her husband might find one another on restless nights such as this one.
“Would you like to put that to the test?” you say without a second thought.
Gwayne clears his throat. “I would not want to invade on your solace, princess.”
“There is plenty of room for you.” You crawl across the bed to see him.
Your eyes find him as he thoughtlessly fiddles with the edge of his chemise, and as he freezes once he meets your gaze.
You beam down at him again. “And it would bring me solace, knowing you were sleeping the slightest bit easier.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“I am.” You think it is the sleep deprivation deluding you. You would never act like this normally. He can sense it too.
He slowly rises from his position on the ground, and multiple bones crackle once he stands.
You roll back over to your side of the bed, watching as he joins you. He seems tense, especially as you join him under the covers.
The two of you lie in bridled silence, neither one of you able to fall asleep. A chill runs through you from the temperature, and Gwayne’s head swivels to look at you.
You turn over on your side to meet his gaze, expecting him to say something. He does not, and looks back up at the ceiling instead.
Your brain, clouded by the fact that you are simultaneously freezing cold and devastatingly fatigued, opens, then pauses as you search for the words.
“Are you cold as well?” you mumble.
Gwayne shrugs nonchalantly. “Slightly.”
You chuckle mirthlessly. “I am.” The sheets suddenly feel rough against your skin. “More than slightly.”
“I can ask the innkeeper for another quilt.”
His earlier words flash back to you. “There is no need to draw any more attention to us,” you repeat.
You see the corner of his lip turn upward. “What do you reckon I do, then, princess?” he asks, and you reach out to touch his arm.
The muscle quickly tightens under your hold.
“You’re warm.” You move closer to him. “If we lie close together, we might just make it through the night.”
That is how you ended up huddled next to Ser Gwayne Hightower for the rest of the night.
You were unaware of the fact that he was lying frozen next to you, and that he did not get a wink of sleep, especially as you mindlessly slung an arm around his middle in your slumber. And as your nipples, solid from the cool breeze that had seeped in through the windows, brushed up against him as you shifted throughout the night.
day four
Gwayne had stopped to relieve himself when you heard them.
The myriad of chirps from some kind of birds had caught your attention, and you had jumped from your horse in an instant, following the sound.
You found yourself on the edge of an open field, behind some bushes, as you looked down to some small yellow birds that weren’t flying away. You deduce that they must like your presence.
It wasn’t long before Gwayne anxious voice interrupted your calm, calling your name just moments before stumbling upon you.
“What are they?” you whisper.
“Chicks,” he responds, in a normal tone. At your silence, he continues, “baby chickens.”
“Truly?” you question, head cocked to the side, watching them.
Gwayne stares at you. “Have you… never seen chicks before?”
“No, only…” you turn your head to him, “chickens.” You shrug.
He shakes his head with a theatrical sort of despair. It would have seemed real if the corners of his lips were not upturned.
“You truly are a princess,” he mutters, and crouches down to the ground.
You stoop down alongside him, watching as the chicks run past one another, chirping quietly.
“Can I touch one?” you mumble.
He gestures with a chin toward the chirping bunch. “Go on, then.”
You reach down to one of the animals, but you can’t quite seem to get a good grip on it. You don’t really try to grip it. You do not find the chance to. Instead, your hand just lingers hesitantly above the crowd of them.
Gwayne’s hands come down to meet yours. He grabs one of them, effortlessly and gently, cradling it in his hands.
Your hand is still lingering beside his, still in a motion as if you were going to grab one, as he did, so he brings the chicken in his hands to yours. You bring your free hand to join the other and cup them together.
He lets one hand release the chick into yours, and it comes down below the two of your hands as if to hold it steady. The other covers the chick to prevent it from jumping out of your hold.
The hand that is under yours touches it, and urges it to close. “Gently,” he murmurs, and you’re holding the chick on your own now, gently and effortlessly, just like he was.
His hands withdraw from yours. He watches as your lips curl up, a pure joy that he had yet to ever witness fill your face, do exactly that. His own mouth mirrors something similar.
You shudder nervously as the chick twitches around in your grip. It comes out half in the form of small chuckles and half in struggled exhales.
Your brows draw together. It seems impossible to relax them, and you feel a panic settle in at nothing in particular. Perhaps it be that your brothers are dead, maybe because you are with a man that you have such complicated and mind-boggling feelings for, or that you were just held as a prisoner for the Greens, and that man is a Green, he is the Green, the Hightower Green you have been conditioned to hate—
Gwayne has stopped smiling. You feel tears running down your face. The chick flies out of your grip once you try to see it closer, and you try your hardest to catch onto your breath, to catch it as it runs from you, but you cannot. You are sobbing before you get any sense to stop it.
“My princess?” he leans closer to you, a wavering hand inching dangerously close, and you push yourself from off the ground. He follows.
“I’m sorry,” you manage through heaving breaths, smoothing down your now wrinkled dress. Why are you apologizing? You do not know why you are apologizing. He is a Green. He should be apologizing to you, for being on the side of the war that killed your brothers—oh, gods, your sweet brothers. Your sweet, young, desperate, dead brothers.
“It’s all right,” he mumbles. His hands, still, are reaching toward your arms, yet not touching. Never touching. Just hovering near yours, always, like he wants to touch you, but he doesn’t.
You wipe your eyes, but the tears keep falling. You mutter something again. Sorry, you hear yourself say again, and then your body moves for you. You wrap your arms around his neck in an embrace so tight you might be strangling him.
He stumbles back slightly, arms still hesitating beside you, and then finally you feel it. He folds them gently around your waist. As gentle as he held the chick.
“Don’t cry,” he comforts.
You do not obey. You would if you could, but for now, you remain in his hold. You, regrettably, enjoy it.
day five
Gwayne did not like to see you cry.
He had first seen it the moment you realized you were captured by the Hightowers. You hadn’t been conscious enough when they found you to care about where you were being taken. He hadn’t enjoyed the sight then, not as his belligerents did, and he does not like to see it now.
He was the one to convince his fellow commanders to spare your life and to instead take you as a hostage. He was the one to have you held in a tent next to his own in the encampments with his two most upstanding soldiers posted outside, and not in those grimy cages fit for animals. He was the one to have you ride your horse directly next to his when on the road with the rest of the army—much to your dismay—as to prevent any dishonorable conduct from occurring. He would never tell you these things, of course, but they live with him.
Gwayne would tell himself that he did all of these things because it was right, that he would do it to any other female prisoner-of-war, given the shocking lack of honor among his knights who vowed to defend it. He had done a good job separating the wheat from the chaff when he became a commander, but there were only few he truly trusted to never harm the young, an innocent—and those who cannot protect themselves. Like you.
You liked to put on a front. And it somewhat worked with others, but not with him. He wishes it would, for some odd reason. Maybe he would not see you the way he does, if it did. He would still treat you with mercy, but it would not be to the level it is. He would never have accepted your hug. He thinks he would have pushed you away.
He wouldn’t have, but he believes he would have.
Since he had finally felt your touch the afternoon previous, the road to the Red Keep had been as quiet as the first day of your journey together. He suspected you had been embarrassed after letting him see your emotions, as you had been combative toward him every day since you had woken up from your comatose state.
He had expected it to come at some point, the unveiling of your feelings, but not in that way. He had expected to hear you sniffle from beside him while on your horses. He would have stayed silent, and he would have let you cry. He believes he would have let you cry on your own if you hadn’t come to him for comfort first.
The fact that you did had brought him joy. It made him hopeful, in some strange way he did not feel himself familiar with.
“You are betrothed to Lord Samwell Blackwood, are you not?”
You look at him, puzzled. “He has been with the Stranger since the war begun.”
Gwayne nods curtly. “So I’ve heard.”
“Then why have you asked?”
He inhales a heavy breath. “I feel it my duty to tell you of this.” He clears his throat. “Before your mother took the throne, there was word among our commanders to betroth you to your cousin, Prince Aemond.”
“You jest.”
“I do not.”
You cock your head to the side, wetting your lips. “And what did you have to say in the matter?”
“That is unneeded for you to know.”
“Why? Because you encouraged them to?”
His voice picks up immediately where you left off. “No, because I fought against it.” He scoffs a laugh. “The One-Eyed Prince is… he is mad.” At your gawking laugh, he turns his head to you. “You must know it too. He is simply and utterly mad.”
“You are his uncle.” You would never tell of his treasonous words to any other, but you feel you must remind him.
“Are you going to betray me and inform my army of the fact?”
“I do not have loyalty to you, though I will not speak of the words to another.”
“Good. Now you tell me something in confidence,” he presses.
You shake your head at the sheer audacity of him. “Why would I do that, ser?”
“What else will we converse about? It is a long and arduous road ahead of us.” His eyes peer into yours, and you feel a sudden urge to tell him everything you have ever kept from him.
“Alright then,” you look to the sky in mock ponder. “When I was young, I would pray to the gods each and every night for a gallant and true knight to take me away from the Red Keep and off to some distant land. There was this one knight, he had belonged to our Kingsguard, who I absolutely adored.” You sigh on the memory, oblivious to the fact that a true and gallant knight was riding right alongside you. “I was just a girl then. It was a silly dream. And the gods do not always play in my favor.”
Were you jesting? Or were you truly so oblivious?
“Do you remember his name?” he asks.
“It has lost me. But I remember his face. He was gorgeous, that one, and very gentle, too. Back then he was the same age as my brother is now.”
He does not let you sit with the fact that you mentioned your brother as if he were alive. “That’s quite young, isn’t it?”
You nod. “Indeed. He was the youngest of every knight in the Keep. Perhaps the youngest in history.”
“What happened to him?”
You exhale a breath, and look down to your horse’s head. “He was in the fire that killed Ser Harwin. I do not know why he had been called to Harrenhal, and I suppose I shall never know. Are you yourself betrothed, or married, ser?”
He huffs. “Gods, no. I was, and remain, of little use as a political pawn for House Hightower, my father being the second son.”
“Therefore if you were to wed, you would do so for love,” you state.
“I suppose so.”
day six
The hood of your cloak was pulled tightly over the upper half of your face, seemingly ritual for whenever you made it to inns, and you felt a tap on your shoulder.
You turn, expecting to see Gwayne, but in his place stood a knight in armor, donning a Hightower sigil on his gambeson.
It is your luck to see Gwayne rushing up from behind him to fetch you.
“Squire, let us retire to our room, yes?” he says, and you nod eagerly, pulling the hood further over your face. The two of you attempt to move forward, and you make it past the knight—
“That is no squire,” the man interjects, grabbing onto your wrist, stopping you. “That is a girl.”
Gwayne steps in between you and the knight, forcing him to release your joint from his hold. His gaze flicks down to the man’s gambeson.
He takes a step closer to him and lowers his voice. “If it pleases you, she’s my distraction for the night, ser. Not worth your notice.”
The knight clears his throat, and Gwayne steps back.
“Blessings upon King Aegon.” He smiles, turning back to the inn entrance.
His hand guides you forward, lingering on the small of your back, surely for the sight of the knight behind you. And then it trails down, over the curve of your back end, and you feel the slightest grip onto it before the door behind you closes, and his hand immediately falls away.
The walk to your room is silent.
Gwayne swallows painfully once you make it to your room.
“I’m sorry—” he begins.
“How may I distract you tonight, ser?” you interrupt, smiling stupidly at his lie, and he sighs one of relief at your lack of offense.
He breathes out a laugh, and swiftly moves to shed himself of his armor. He has been struggling on his own each time he has done so. You only noticed it the last night, and offered help, but had been rejected.
You would not ask this time, you would simply do. Your fingers were desperate and untrained in their efforts, but they did the trick in time for him not to deny you, and he was rid of the metal captivity.
You turn as he does, ridding yourself of your heavy cloak and pushing your hair out of the way of the laces of your dress. He pulls them loose without a word, and the warmth of his body behind yours would surely prove the most effective thing of the night, you decide as you gaze at the thin quilt on your bed.
As your gown slides down your body, you can hear the shuffling of Gwayne removing all but his linens behind you. If you took just a step backward, you would be touching him.
“It is a terrible coincidence, the Hightower army resting here,” you mumble, your hands fiddling with the light cloth around the your wrists.
“It is,” he agrees solemnly.
You retreat from his warmth and sit on the edge of your bed, your back up straight and your fingers clasped together in your lap. You weren’t particularly tired this night. Maybe it be from the surge of adrenaline at the knight outside, and it had already raged through your limbs, rendering them restless the moment the door to the inn had shut behind you.
Gwayne’s hand was close to you then, to an area you regarded as most private among you, a maiden. The memory of it twinged deep in your stomach. It was an unfamiliar feeling.
He had joined you in sitting on the edge of a bed, albeit his own. His own stature had mirrored yours. All tense and surged with the possibility of a fight.
“It is rather cold this night,” you mutter.
Gwayne nods curtly. “It is.”
Your gaze lowers to watch your fingers be relentlessly picked on by those of the other hand. “I fear one of those knights will bust through the doorway, and take me away with little fight, you being so far from me,” you whisper. The night was silent enough for him to hear it.
“I fear the same.”
You look up at him. “If he were to do so, it would certainly raise suspicion if your whore was sleeping in a bed adjacent to yours.”
He takes a turn to meet your eyes. “If you wish to sleep in the same bed as I, you need only ask.”
Your tongue darts out to wet your lips. “May I sleep in your bed tonight, Gwayne?” you muster.
“As you wish, my princess.”
day seven
Your horse stops before you instruct it to.
In the distance lies a field of flowers, pink and purple, some yellow, and all illuminated by sunlight. It was nearly time for it to set.
You cannot still be in the Reach, you think. It has been much too long, but thank the gods if you are. What a sight to see.
You want to see it closer. Gwayne will be okay with it, you declare, and you hop off of your horse and begin walking in the direction of the field.
“No, princess,” he says, exasperated. “We cannot go off trail again.”
“The flowers,” you breathe. “It is beautiful.”
The scent in the air is intoxicating. It is rather pungent, the closer you get to it, and the air seems more sultry than just moments before.
You remove your cloak from your shoulders, letting it drop behind you as you continue forward. It is the slightest bit relieving from the heat, but your body quickly acclimates to it again, and the sweat begins beading. It is no wonder. The sleeves under your dress are long. It makes you question why you decided to wear such a stupid thing, in this climate.
Once you make it to the field, it envelopes you. The fever. It starts in your lower abdomen in a heavy thrum and travels up the rest of your body.
Where is Gwayne?
You turn around. He is just a few steps behind. He has been trailing behind you the entire time. It was hard to notice, with the pull of the meadow, but now that you are here, he is all you can think about. All you can focus on. You do not like that.
His hair illuminates in the sunlight, much like the flowers. Your skin tingles.
He froze in his movements the moment you did. You continue further into the field. His feet fall in step with yours, and you think you can hear his breathing, all shaky and uncertain.
You make it to an empty patch of the meadow, and stop once again.
“Ser?” you turn back to face him. The scorch of the sun worsens with each passing second. Sweat gathers on your brow. “My dress... please… help me get it off.” You raise a timid arm to your back, accepting defeat once you find yourself unable to reach the laces.
Gwayne’s thumb twitches toward you. His forehead glistens. He must be burning too.
You spot the clench of his jaw, and take a wary step toward him.
“Stop—” he holds a hand out, body turning away from you. “Do not move. Please. Just stay there.” He avoids your gaze.
“What is it?” you ask. You know what it is.
You know what he is feeling, because you feel it too. It presses hard and deep in your abdomen, and it just wants to be relieved. You want to be relieved. And Ser Gwayne Hightower looks rather handsome in this light, surrounded by the pink and purple—and was it red?—flowers. He seems close to pouncing on you like a wild dog. Gods, may he?
He had always been alluring. May it be your frustration that you could never have him in the way you wanted that made you so combative, or the fact that he is a Green—it is probably both, but neither seem so important now. Not when you feel the heat of a thousand suns burn through you, all the way to your core, and then all over again.
The man himself looks close to releasing in his braies just by looking at your face. It brings you some ease, yet also further discomfort, to know that he feels the same as you. You had blocked out the idea, seeing yourself as delusional and unrealistic for thinking he would ever show any form of attraction toward you.
“Gwayne—” you exhale, though it releases itself in the form of a groan. “It is sweltering.” You bend over to clutch the end of your dress, and you are close to pulling it off yourself, if fate was willing. Something halts you.
“Please, don’t.” His voice sounds pitiful. It is all low and whiny. “I do not know if I can handle that. Not now. Not when… fuck.”
You want to keel over and die.
You release the cloth from your grip and let the dress fall back down. You rise back up, slowly, and flatten down the wrinkled fabric of your middle with your hands.
Your lips tremble. “What do you want to do?”
“I am unsure.” He still cannot look you in the eye. “It is impure, and unchivalrous for me to be thinking of you this way.”
“I am all right with it.” It is then that you realize how you sound. Desperate for a Green, as if you were a common whore, which is probably what he thinks of you as. At least he tries to fight it. You should fight it too. You are fierce enough to fight whatever it is that is welling up inside of you.
Your eyes are squeezed shut, and the shame tries to conquer the hunger—but the hunger wins in the blink of an eye. The blink of your eye, in fact, as you look back at Gwayne.
“We cannot,” you mumble. “We should not. I am a maiden. You are the opposition. We cannot.” You repeat the words to yourself, over and over, like a mantra. If the shame did not prevail, perhaps distraction will. Your eyes shut tight again, and you repeat the words. We cannot. We should not. You are a maiden. He is the opposition.
We cannot, we should not, you are a maiden, Ser Gwayne Hightower is hard by simply standing in your presence—
Your eyes snap open, and you find that you are standing directly in front of him. You must have been inching closer to him with each sentence you repeated.
Your gaze flicks down to his crotch. Sure enough, your thoughts did not lie to you. Perhaps your dragon blood has given you the gift of prophecy.
He finds it appropriate to look at you, finally, and you realize how close you are to one another.
In specific—how close your lips are to one another. So, so close, yet so far. You almost want to give in, and you lean just a little closer. He stays still, though when you stop moving, his head moves closer too, close enough that you can almost feel his breath fanning into your own mouth.
Your noses are touching, that is how close you are. You could just slot your lips right onto his. It would be so easy, so incredibly simple, if you would just move forward, just a little—
His hands reach up to cradle your face in his hands, thumbs on either side grazing your cheekbones. They move down your face, down to your lips, and one of the thumbs strokes over the bottom lip. And he closes the gap.
You feel his lips envelope yours first, and then you feel his tongue inch into your mouth. Your lips close over one another’s, and he moans. Ser Gwayne Hightower is moaning into your mouth, and it feels like you have been sent to each of the seven heavens and back again. Your head is pushed backwards with the force of his kiss.
Your hand reaches around to brush over his nape. His hands travel further down your body, one finding itself wrapped around your waist, the other petting your breast over your dress. It seems that the true touch of it pacifies him, as it allows you to push deeper into the kiss, letting your tongue slide into his mouth.
You only break away to lower yourself to the ground. He follows, as though the answers to every challenge in his life were held on your lips. He hikes your dress up your legs, your smallclothes with it, until they both pool at your waist.
He lifts two fingers to his mouth, coating them in spit before reaching down to your bare cunt and thrusting them inside. You let out a shrieking moan, letting your head press into the dirt below you and thrashing back and forth in pleasure.
“Look at me,” Gwayne instructs. You let your eyes lock onto his, you try, but the deep press of his fingers inside of you makes it hard to focus. His lips, hanging open, hover just above yours, and he moves forward to bring you and he together again.
It is breathing moans into each other’s mouths and pathetic, desperate mashing before you finally get the hold onto his lips, or perhaps him onto yours. His fingers cease, and slip out swift enough for it to go unnoticed for a single moment.
He breaks apart from your mouth, and wastes no time in sliding himself down your body. The disappointment at the loss of his fingers does not last long, as his lips lock onto your cunt.
Gwayne snakes his arms under your legs and he yanks your body closer to him. Your fingers curl in his hair, and he only laps harder at you.
“Y—yes, ser—” you cry, your thighs squeezing his head, clit pulsating under the assault of his tongue.
He breaks away for just a moment, big blue eyes locking onto your weak ones. “Not ser. Gwayne. My name is Gwayne.”
And he dives back into you, gathering your wetness on his tongue in a torturous swipe from bottom to top, one that earns a sweet little whine from the depths of your throat. It reminds him, in that moment, of the sounds you would make when you did not get your way back in Oldtown—the sounds he would shamefully think of as he fucked his fist late at night, the sounds that he would repent about for thinking and acting on with such humiliating vitality, and more importantly, for not regretting any of it in the slightest.
The sheer relief you get from his mouth onto yours is unlike anything you have felt before, because you have not felt it before. You had heard word of the act in song, and in gossip spread around by your ladies-in-waiting, but to experience it was the greatest decision you ever made. A true, gallant knight between your legs, satiating the hunger that spread in your loins and his alike, yet he is only focused on your release now, latching his tongue on your clit and sucking hard.
His fingers graze your folds and glide around the edges, already slick with your wet. One finger probes, just the slightest bit, and you shudder at the contact.
You let out a loud cry as it presses itself fully inside, without warning. Perfection, you think you hear him say. The words vibrate on your clit, agonizingly so.
His finger pumps in and out of you, and his mouth works on your cunt all the same. The fire in your veins only grows stronger as your climax approaches.
Your fingers tug and pull on his hair, and somewhere in the middle of your gratification a second slim finger of his joins the first, pressing deep into your cunt as they allow him.
The sounds coming from your mouth you do not think you have ever made before. They approach from deep in your lungs and are hoarsely ripped from your throat.
It creeps closer, that unfamiliar thing called release, and your walls tighten around his fingers. Gwayne only sucks harder, and pushes his fingers further into your cunt, his knuckles pressing into your folds.
The feeling floods your body in an instant. It feels prickly, for some odd reason, and it nips your limbs, but blissfully so. Your brain feels fuzzy, and you cannot think of anything but him. It is a way that makes you crave for it immediately once it ebbs.
You let out a little sob once his fingers slip out from inside you. You didn’t know you were crying, and a few stray tears fall from your eyes before you realize.
Gwayne licks a stripe up your cunt, collecting whatever fluids he procured down there into his mouth and swallowing them with the gulp of a man who might just be dying of thirst.
He is up your body and has his wet lips on yours by the time you tear yourself away from the sight. It is then that you feel how truly hard he is under his linens. His cock presses against your spent core, and he nearly jerks back at the contact.
“Gwayne,” you breathe, and his head shoots up to look at you.
“What is it, sweet girl?” he mumbles, suddenly winded by the sweet sound of his name on your tongue.
“I want you to fuck me.”
He is frozen solid at your ask. Your arousal on his mouth glistens with each slight twitch upward. “You’re sure of it?”
You nod, but it is not enough.
“Tell me,” he commands.
“I want you to fuck me, Gwayne, how else must I tell you?” you reply impatiently, and grind your hips up to feel his hardened cock brush against you once more.
Both of your hands come up and intertwine themselves behind his neck, preventing him from straying any further—pulling him down to you, in fact, so you can grind up on him some more.
You lift your head from the ground to try and capture his lips into a somewhat calculating kiss, but his strength prevails, and his head softly twitches back before your mouth can get hold on his.
You fall back, defeated, but his hand comes to hold your wrist, and he comes down to close the gap. He chuckles into your mouth at your desperation, and you only kiss him harder, as if you were trying to become one with him.
His hand rubs up and down your wrist for a moment, before he reaches down to release his lower half from his linens.
You take a hand from off his neck and reach down to meet his own, searching around for his cock. You get a firm grip on it, stroking it up once. He lets out a shuddery moan, and his hand finds your wrist once again—not stopping you, but guiding you, perhaps.
He pumps himself with your hand, and you let him for only a moment, before overpowering his gentleness and guiding his length to your cunt. The tip of it glides on your folds. You could die right here, and it would be okay.
Gwayne pushes into you with a wounded groan, his jaw hanging wide open. You, on the other hand, nearly shriek.
He rocks himself out of you slowly, then back into you almost sluggishly.
“Is this all right?” he manages through strangled breaths, and you nod fervently, using the hand still on his neck to push his head closer to yours.
You mean to kiss him, but his forehead lies on yours instead. You’ll take what you can get.
He presses swift pecks on your cheeks, on your nose, and on your lips as he gains momentum. Your eyes flutter shut, but his hand comes up to press a few light smacks to your cheek.
“I said to look at me,” he grunts. “I want to see your eyes—“
You open them back up at that. They’re glossed over again, with tears, and you’re glad that Gwayne does not take it as pain. There was pain, but it is long gone. He kisses the droplets as they fall from the corners of your eyes.
It is utterly intoxicating, the drag of his hips. He seems to lose himself in the feeling too. Wave after wave of constant pleasure washes over you with the somehow gentle slam of him into you.
You babble incomprehensible speech, just as lost as he is as he, slack-jawed as he fucks you. His eyes are focused on your face, your face saturated with sweat, for a single twitch of anything at all, yet he finds nothing. Nothing but rapture, as he believes it should be. He brings his hand back down to your clit and strokes it so delicately, but it brings you sweet relief all the more.
You feel it cresting again. Up your spine, down your legs, dumbing your brain into mush, prickling at the back of your neck. “Gods, Gwayne—Oh, gods, I’m gonna—“
You don’t finish the sentence. It hits you, you cum again, so hard around his cock, and it isn’t long into your perfect bliss before he is pulls out, spilling his seed onto the bunched-up cotton of your dress.
You feel as though you are one with him. It is like your flesh melts into his. Your sweat certainly does, especially as he joins his forehead with yours again, all sticky and damp.
“I am deeply sorry—” he says in between quick kisses, “to have taken your maidenhood.”
You shake your head softly. “If it shames you so, I can raise a proposition of marriage to my mother once we get back to the Keep.” He laughs at that, unknowing you were not telling a joke.
Still, you breathe out a chuckle.
day nine
The communal bath that you had found yourself in was satisfyingly empty. Since Gwayne had taken your maidenhood two moons previous, you had been desperate for it to happen again, and again, and perhaps a thousand times more, though you resisted the urge to ask outright while in the inns.
Now, though, seemed like the perfect moment to do so. You could clean yourself properly for the first time in weeks, and then dirty yourself all over again with the satisfaction of your mutual sin.
He had already undone the laces of your dress for you, and you stepped out of the gown that dropped to your feet, eager to feel the warmth of the water envelop your skin. And for him to join you. So that you could see—and feel—his bare body, properly. You had already shed your linens by the time you made it to the water.
You had retreated to the further side of the bath, so that you could watch as Gwayne undressed himself. It was nicer like this, being able to take in his body for the first time, as he stripped off his gambeson, then his chausses, and then, finally, his smallclothes.
His figure was very unsurprisingly robust. The light of the countless candles surrounding the baths set for quite the intimate atmosphere.
You bit back a smile as he inched closer to the bath, stepping inside with a heavy sigh of relief. The Hightowers did seem to prioritize cleanliness. Perhaps they place it next to godliness. Gwayne certainly does not seem to mind, given how keen he was to eat your cunt until you came undone on his tongue.
He threw his head back with a shuddering sigh once he finally sunk into the water. You watch as the grime expels from the surface of his body in one fell swoop, becoming one with the rest of the stream.
“Have you something to say?” he questions, a brow darted upward at your uncharacteristically blissful expression.
Your cheeks flushed, a harder, content smile crossing over your face. “Just observing.”
“Must you observe so far?” he mutters.
“I must,” you sneer, giving a firm nod.
His eyes flick down to your bare breasts, sat warped on your chest under the soft wave of the water.
He quickly averts his gaze to the center of the bath once you perk them forward with your arms.
“I am truly apologetic,” he starts. “For taking your maidenhood. ‘specially in such an unclean place, where anyone could have seen us if they had simply come to probe into the noise.”
You scoff. “Would you have preferred it happen inside the walls of some dull inn?”
“I’d have preferred you comfortable.”
“I was comfortable. I am comfortable.”
At his silence, you push yourself off of the wall and glide over to him. He sits frozen as your chest brushes against his arm.
“Are you a maid, ser? Well—were you a maid?” you question, feigning a look of innocence.
“I haven’t been a maid for a long time, princess.” His head hangs low.
He lets you grip his arm and guide it between your legs. “Are you ashamed of the fact?”
“I am ashamed that I am not,” he mutters, seemingly unfazed as you grind your cunt against his wrist. You let out a low moan, your breath wavering before you realize his lament.
So you release his arm from your hold and straddle his hips, placing your hands on each of his shoulders. Your chest is eye level with his face. It seems to be the only thing that can bring his head back up.
You can feel his cock hardening below you as you rock back and forth against him. He watches your face that stares down back at him—both of your jaws are slack, and you breathe heavy pants into each others mouths, gaining some semblance of pleasure from the act.
But it is not enough, no. It is never enough.
You take a hand from his shoulder and reach down to grip his length, guiding it into your walls at once. You push down unto him with a sweet little cry, one quickly silenced by his lips on your own.
His kiss is just as tender as you remember it being, amorous flowers aside, and you hum into him. A hand cups your cheek and he tilts his head, his tongue breaching the plush of your lips, just exploring.
Your fingers curl around his nape as you thrust, up and down, up and down, and he concurrently rolls his hips back and forth.
“Fuck—sweet princess—” he moans once he breaks apart from your mouth.
You gasp and shudder, and he reaches his head up to kiss all over your face. Your eye, the brow bone above it, down to the highest point of your cheek on the side of your face, then to the corner of your lip, and then he cranes his head down to kiss you on your neck. You throw your head back to allow him access.
Once he reaches your sternum, he darts his tongue out first when attaching his lips to it. “Oh, gods,” you whimper into his hair.
“Ser? Gwayne—” you can't quite speak, the words near dying on your tongue. “Are you mine, Gwayne? Tell me—” your hips slow, and his only speed up. He begins fucking up into you, and another moan rips through your throat.
He nods fervently against your neck, lifting his head back up to see you. “I am yours, princess. Fuck—” his hips stutter, though he relents.
It does not give you solace. If he is yours, how long shall he remain so? Until the gods rip him from your grasp—which would be soon now, with each tread of your horses closer to the Red Keep.
His hand slides up to your ribs as if to stabilize you, and he wraps it around your middle. His forehead drops to your shoulder, raising with each jolt of your body upward, the constant slam of his cock up into your cunt and then out again.
You know few things now, except for him. Your walls clench around him, and he nearly ceases at that. You continue in his ministrations, rocking back and forth onto him, savoring in the way his length hits you in the spot that makes you feel near the brink of climax.
“I love you.” You think you hear yourself say. And he just watches you, as you chase your peak, so blissfully unaware of the words that just came from your mouth. Your sweet mouth.
Gwayne reaches a hand to cradle your head, and push it closer to his, so that he can take your sweet mouth into his. It is less of a kiss and more of two mouths pressing against each other, but you accept it either way. The two of you pant raggedly against each other, and you feel your core tighten with each deep press of his cock inside of you.
He can feel it too. It is more of threat than satisfying, the idea of spilling his seed inside of you, but you seem to not care. You might just not know. If you were true to your word of your maidenhood—he does not care if you were or not—you must be pitifully unknowledgeable on the subject.
He remembers word of you being betrothed to some high lord widow who had died on the frontlines of battle when the war first broke out, fighting for the side of your mother. Then, once you were captured, there was word of you marrying one of his two younger Targaryen nephews. The thought of you being kept as a prisoner for Aemond sends a shudder through his body, and he rids himself free of the idea as his orgasm approaches closer.
“My princess—” he tries. You do not notice. You persist in your pursuit of release, and he grips your jaw gently, catching your attention. “Look at me.”
You nod at nothing in particular, mouth hanging open and mewling needy whimpers as you oscillate on his cock.
“I cannot—I cannot cum inside.” He lets out a strangled moan as you begin grinding faster than just moments before, as if encouraging him to do so.
“Why not?” you breathe.
His head nearly lulls back as he staves off his own release. “You could get with child.”
You grip his hand and lead it to your breast, and he lets himself fall for your entrancement, kneading it between his fingers. Your nipple is caught between two of them, and he presses them together just the slightest bit too hard, earning a wince from above him. It makes him realize he has been regrettably neglecting them this entire time.
“My breasts are sore.” You inhale sharply. “I shall bleed soon.”
Ah. In that case—
Gwayne dips his hands back into the water, finding your hips to guide them, delighting in the way your moans grow more and more fervent as his cock drags against your walls.
It approaches swift, and you do not have any time nor stamina to warn him of it. You wonder if he can sense it.
Just as quick as it came, it washes over you in an instant. Your muscles clamp down around him, and he moans loud into your shoulder—you soon feel a warmth deep in your womb, the warmth of his seed. A minuscule part of you hopes it will take.
Shortly afterward, he lifts your bodies from the water, carrying you with your legs wrapped around him. His cock has slipped out of you, but the kiss he places on your lips distracts you from the loss.
You push his chest, separating your mouths, and wrap your arms around his neck. “Let us leave together, Gwayne. Silverwing is large enough to saddle two. You could be a sellsword, and I a scribe—I your wife. I shall give you children, if it is what you desire. We can spend our days in rest and tranquility, like this.” Your breath still hasn’t caught.
It is a moment of silence before Gwayne finds the words. The dubious words, though the ones that provide enough hope to settle you. “Perhaps, my princess. Do not worry yourself with eventuality.” And he sets you down on the marble just above the bath. Your calves dip back into the water, and it is then you realize that they are aching.
He kneels down into the water and takes your legs over his shoulders. You feel the stretch in your thighs, equal parts from their growing soreness and the length of his shoulders. His release begins seeping out of your cunt from the pressure of it all.
He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee, then to the inside of your thigh, and then finally to your clit. His head dips down to your opening, and he sucks.
It becomes more like he is kissing, or eating you, at some point. You cannot tell. The pleasure has already gotten to be too much, and you are writhing under him.
His arms wrap around your thighs and he pulls you closer to his mouth, and you loudly and embarrassingly moan, your fingers rake through his hair, gripping it tight when his nose brushes against your clit.
You haven’t discovered his objective, but thank the gods for him. It is somewhat relaxing and simultaneously frustrating for him to be lapping away mindlessly at your cunt.
“Please, Gwayne, let me cum—” you beg, all breathless and crestfallen, and his eyes flick up to you. He finds you are the most spoiled thing he has ever met, yet also the most beautiful. He thinks, in that moment, that he truly should consider being taken as your husband.
He nods once. “As you wish.”
And his mouth is replaced by his fingers. He pumps them into you, a relentless pace, and his lips find themselves back onto you, but now on your clit.
He laps at you and rocks his fingers further inside, getting your folds all slick and glossy with both your own and his own arousal, as well as his own saliva.
He curls his fingers deep in your cunt, in that spongy spot that once sheathed his cock, and it is enough to bring you to climax before you realize it.
You swear your vision goes black for a moment as you cum, and the bliss fills your body over the irritation. It was embarrassingly fast how quickly he brought you to absolution, but you did not have enough might to let it wash over you the way your orgasm had.
Gwayne looks up at you with those big blue eyes of his, now glossed over. The lower half of his face is sheen with your cum—his cum—and he pants and lifts himself up to join you on the marble, his strong body glistening with the damp of the bath.
You think you might faint.
day fourteen
Tonight’s inn had been the nicest of all fourteen. You and Gwayne had jointly decided for it to be the last of your stops, and that you would make the journey the rest of the way there without sleeping.
It was not long to King’s Landing. As much as you had longed to see your mother, and to be home again, the thought of what would happen to Gwayne in the coming days was a thought too harrowing to bear.
But it had lingered in your mind since the field. Certainly he could not leave you, having taken your maidenhood. Your mother would find a way. She knows what it is like to be infatuated with someone you should not be infatuated with. She knows Gwayne. As a soldier for the opposition, yes, but she knows him all the more.
If she has held mercy for his sister, she would certainly hold mercy for him, especially given the situation at hand. The situation of you being in love with a Hightower, and him having bedded you—well, fucked you in a field, then in a bath, a few scattered moments along the road of him lapping at your cunt, or sticking his fingers there to cull your nerves the nights you were too tense to sleep. Your mother coddled you enough before you were taken hostage, and she would certainly do more once you are back with her.
Gwayne seems to sense your restlessness. You have resorted to single bed rooms in the inns, given the underestimated lack of coin he decided to bring with him. He has been able to pick up on your behavior for the last few days—noting to himself how much you lack sleep the closer you get to King’s Landing—and he has always been able to get you to talk about it. Tonight, you seem not wanting of his perception.
He turns over to face you. “Are you feeling well?” he asks.
You look to him for a moment. “I feel fine.”
Propping himself up on one arm, he maneuvers himself closer until he is hovering above you, as he stares down at where you lie. “You mustn’t need to lie.” His voice is soft.
Your lungs expand with a heavy breath of air. “I do not wish for you to leave when we return to the Red Keep. You told me that we would talk about it, and we never have.”
He brushes your hair behind your ear with his free hand. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I want us to wed.”
Gwayne stares into you. And then hangs his head low with laughter.
“I am serious, Gwayne. If you swore fealty to my mother, the rightful queen, she would show you mercy. I have no doubt she has shown it to your sister, and to your niece and her daughter too.” His smile was wiped from his face sometime as you spoke.
“You cannot be certain of that, though, can you princess?” he mumbles, raising his head back up to cock it to the side.
“I cannot.” You begin picking at the skin around your fingernails.
Gwayne places a hand over them, stopping you. “The agreement was for me to bring you, unharmed, to the Red Keep. And then I would leave, or they would have my head.” His hand envelops one of yours.
“My mother would not let them have it, if I simply tell her.”
“You speak lightly of a heavy thing, my princess.” He squeezes your hand a bit tighter. “If you so much as suggest that the Hightowers are anything less than treasonous vipers, your mother’s council will smell a captive who has learned to love her cage. You are her only daughter, yes, and she adores you. Therefore, if she discovers how thoroughly I have failed to keep my distance, amnesty will be the last thing she grants my house. It will be fire and blood, starting with my head on a pike.”
“She knows what it is like to love someone forbidden to her.”
Gwayne grins at your words. “She also knows she must satisfy her council,” he says softly.
As much as it pains you, you realize he is right. Yet he still remains as handsome as ever in the dark, and his lips are glossed over, looking so plump and lonely.
“Will you kiss me?” you mutter, and kiss you he does. His mouth is just as soft as you had imagined, and he is still so tender and hesitant in his ministrations you almost feel a want to take over.
Your lips are pliable, though, and part for him almost instantly. The hand that held yours comes up to cradle your cheek, and your legs open up a spot for him to slot himself into.
You are grateful for the loss of layers in spite of the outdoor elements—which have been terribly cold nearly the entire journey—as they give you easy access to the growing length in Gwayne’s linens.
He breathes a low groan into your mouth when you reach a hand under the fabric cuff of his waist to grip his cock. You pump him in a slow rhythm, and he nearly falters completely, the arm propping him up above you buckling and lowering him to his elbow.
The hand cradling your face moves to your own core, and he hastily hikes your shift up your thighs. His fingers find your cunt, pressing his thumb to your clit and stroking it.
The two of you breath and pant into one another’s mouth, the speed of both of your caresses increasing as your moans do.
“Would you—” Gwayne pants, “like me inside?”
You nod eagerly, and pull your hand from his cock. His own hand ceases motion on you, and he uses both arms to gather your body and flip you onto your stomach. The featherbed mattress bounces with the movement, and you reach your hands behind you to pull your shift up entirely to your middle, perking your ass up toward him.
Gwayne has already rid himself of his smallclothes in the meantime. He places a hand right above your backend, stabilizing both you and himself, and lines himself up with your cunt.
He leans his body over yours and presses soft kisses along your spine, pushing himself inside of you with a long groan. You let out a needy one all the same.
“Keep moving—” you beg, letting the top of your head fall to the pillow below you. He hums in response, and begins thrusting slowly, still hesitant.
It is a stretch, but a welcome one nonetheless. It is easy to lose trail of your thoughts with the drag of his cock in and out and the press of his chest to your back, the song of his pretty little grunts and groans singing in your ear.
He wraps his arms around your middle, one hand gripping a breast through the soft cotton of your shift. You flick your hair away from your neck, and his lips quickly find the spot, tipping you into absolute bliss.
One of his arms, the one not clutching your chest, sneaks down to your core, and he begins rubbing your clit with a seemingly endless vitality.
The other pushes the two of you up so that you are both standing on your knees. Your hands extend to his head behind you, pushing it closer as you awkwardly crane your neck so that you can join your lips with his in what may be the sloppiest way they have ever met each other.
His fingers continue their assault on your pearl, and his hips rock into you, and it all feels so much. So good, yet so much. Your chest rises and falls rapidly with each slam of his cock into your cunt, the strength of which also makes his head bob slightly into your kiss, coating the area above and below and beside your lips with his own spit.
There is little surprisingly little build-up to your release. It comes quick, like the tide coming in to take away a shell from the shore. It seems to tear through you, lighting up every nerve in your body, pulled straight from your breathless lungs and your racing heart and illuminating your frenzied brain with nothing other than euphoria.
He is still pumping in and out of you, seemingly chasing his own release. You feel a warmth deep in your overwhelmed cunt, and you know he has come, his body slowing entirely. He breaks away from your lips with a soft little cry, and you simply look at each other for a moment as your breath returns to the both of you.
In this moment, you think Ser Gwayne Hightower is the most beautiful creature in the world.
“You are more than a beauty,” he says in turn. You grin at him, still breathless, and join your lips together once more.
day sixteen
When you arrive at the gates of the Red Keep, Syrax and Caraxes are posted on the battlements.
You look over, and Gwayne seems as if he might just curl up and die. You scoff out a laugh at the sight, and he immediately straightens his back.
Open the gates, yells some guard from behind the wall, and the gate begins to part, grinding against the gravel below.
You will see your mother today. For the first time in months, you will see your mother. Will she be different? Is she a different person now that she is on the throne? More importantly, will she be a different person now that her eldest son is dead? You wonder if they have burned the body yet, or perhaps even set it out to sea. He could not become a Targaryen, as he would never become King—the gods would not allow it, so history will remember him as a Velaryon. It would only be fitting for his body to be released into the water.
You should tell her about this. She must be so overwhelmed with all of her recent duties, she may have forgotten about the fact. Is little Joffrey still in the Vale? Surely, mother must have sent for his return by now. He is too vulnerable there on his own, no matter who he is with.
When you blink hard in an attempt to settle yourself, you realize your horse has been guided inside the walls of the Keep, and Gwayne is helping you off of your horse. His hands are on your waist, and you jump down with a grip on his wrists to stabilize you. Yet your eyes are not on him—they are on any entrance, every door where your mother could come out of.
He sighs, and you finally glance at him. His hands hesitate to leave their spot on your middle. “You are home, and you are safe, my princess.” And then his arms drop back to his side, as if ashamed he let them linger for a moment too long.
“Must you go?” you breathe out a chuckle, trying to lighten the mood that seems to deepen with each passing moment.
His hand reaches for yours, and his voice is lower now. “It is the deal.”
For some reason, your heart seems to shatter. It feels odd and disheartening, knowing that he in this moment has a harsher effect on you than anything before.
Your expression has dropped, and Gwayne must be able to see it. His hand grips yours tighter, and he sucks in a breath, his head dropping to avoid your gaze. Your gaze, which quickly wells with tears. You are confused as to how this would have been the outcome of your journey together—and you are unsure if you are glad of it, or instead disappointed in yourself for not realizing that this is what would always happen.
You lower your voice too. “I do not want you to go,” you say, and your hand finally reciprocates Gwayne’s affection. You clutch it, tight, hoping it may get through to him.
It does not. His head does not lift, not even a single bit. You think you can see his brows furrow.
“I have done my duty, my princess,” he mumbles.
Hundreds of solutions flow through your mind in an instant. He could stay, swear fealty to your mother, and he could be yours. He could be your sworn shield and protector. He could be yours, if he would only say yes.
You open your mouth to say it, but nothing comes out. The words die on your tongue.
“Stay,” is what you can manage. “Please, Gwayne.”
His head tilts up, but he still averts his gaze from yours. Something else, something in the distance, catches his attention. It catches yours too. Two heads of familiar lengthy silver hair—your mother and her husband—inch closer to you and Gwayne.
The hand that held onto his was already back at your side. You must have done it without thought.
“Mummy,” you mumble. And she smiles.
She inches closer to you, seemingly dumbfounded that the sight before her is real. “Sweet girl,” she says, and you feel close to crumbling.
You want to step closer, to close the gap between the two of you, but you cannot bring yourself to leave his side.
But Gwayne is by your side one moment, and gone the next. He is pulled away by the gold cloaks, and it is with little struggle. He lets himself be pulled away. He lets himself be pushed out of the walls of the Keep, and he watches as you stand and stammer all bewildered and reaching to plead his forgiveness to the queen.
The gate closes on him once his horse is by his side.
day thirty five
You have not found much use for yourself since you have returned to the Red Keep. Neither has anyone else.
The war still rages on. It reminds you of the promise you had made to yourself, to leave if it did not end, to leave with Gwayne to Essos. He would be a sellsword, and you a scribe, under the protection of Silverwing.
It seemed a better life, a freer life, you and he on the road together. Being locked away in your chambers of your own volition, anything seemed better.
But Gwayne had abandoned you that day. He had let himself be carried away, and your mother had ignored your pleas of his fealty. It seemed nobody was on your side.
You had only wished for peace. Whatever had grown in place of it had taken your brothers away from you, and Gwayne, too, in some way.
If the war had not gone on, perhaps you could have met him another way. Perhaps he would have been your betrothed. And you could love him the way you wanted to, the way you should have since you woke up in the encampment with him by your side.
He had protected you all those months ago, you had come to realize. The violence of the men who fought under his command would have harmed you more than the words that came from his mouth when defending himself in your stupid fights, the ones you would feed into when he forced you to ride alongside him as the soldiers would march further into the Reach. The words that you replied with when he would anger you, when he would attempt to get close to you.
You should have let him get close to you when he tried. Your need for survival had prevailed then and you took every attempt as some sort of tactic to manipulate you to his side.
But Gwayne had no side, as you swiftly figured out. He wanted out of his cage seemingly as badly as you did, but he did the intelligent thing—the thing he warned you he would always do—and returned to his people, to those he swore loyalty to.
These days, it feels you have no people. Your mother is always off attending to her royal duties, your stepfather and cousins assisting her. And you have no brothers left to bond to. Joffrey is still too little, and too shy, to converse with. The others, your half-siblings, are just a few years young.
If the Hightowers had left you for dead that day, you think you would be more comfortable in the arms of the Stranger than you do in this seemingly haunted home. Your maidenhood would be untainted, and your memory would live on as tragic and loyal. You had left to fight for your mother’s cause after all and you would have died for it then, gods willing.
A piece of you wants to hurl yourself from a window for the treasonous thoughts you have had, but you just want peace. You want peace and freedom. Most of all, though, you want Gwayne.
You can only hope he wants you too, wherever he is. You will wait, and you will bide your time until the war is over—if you live until then. And you will take Silverwing and fly to him, and you will be with him, and you will exile yourselves to Essos. You will dream of that outcome until it happens.
Something deep inside you says it will.
LIFE IS STRANGE
FEATURING: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader
SUMMARY: A prince washes up on the shore outside your cottage, and you must decide whether you’re going to leave him to his fate or save his life. Either way, you know there will be consequences.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, commoner!reader, eventual dragonseed!reader, jace lives, eventual smut, class differences (jace is obviously a prince and reader is a commoner). Reader is not too fond of him at first because she is from Sharp Point. This is a bit of a mix of show canon and book canon in that Jace went to the Gullet to save his brothers and Rhaena still claimed Sheepstealer
AUTHOR'S NOTES: i HADDDD to do a fic for our beloved boy </3 i miss you jacaerys velaryon, prince of dragonstone, heir to the iron throne. I will truly never move on from this death </3 so we need a world where he does not die. I'm saur excited for this because it's my first time writing a reader who comes from a commoner background, AND I finally get to write the dragons ... originally she was not supposed to be a dragonseed, but I just cannot help myself. If I'm going to be writing a hotd era fic, our girl is going to have a dragon. ANYWAY I hope you guys enjoy! please leave a comment or reblog mwah mwah
You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.
By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away.
You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.
It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.
You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.
Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.
The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.
Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.
This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.
This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.
But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again.
You should leave him.
The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.
By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all.
It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—
As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.
You feel sick to your stomach.
He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.
He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.
The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—
—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.
The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.
You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.
And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not.
His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.
He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.
He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous.
Cold. Hurt. Dying.
You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path.
A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name.
If this boy lives, others will come looking for him.
And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.
Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t.
He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.
Except, he didn’t, did he?
He should be dead—any other man would be dead.
Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.
The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.
The Stranger came for him and left him with you.
Why?
There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.
So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?
You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.
You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.
Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment.
If there is life, you will do what you must.
If there is not, you will turn and walk away.
You have never prayed for someone to be dead before.
Please, you think now miserably. Please.
Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—
There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.
Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.
You know that this boy could be the death of you.
The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.
Worse still, he could recover.
Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.
The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.
“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need.
His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir.
Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.
With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.
—————————
He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne.
Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you.
You spend the first day trying to keep him alive.
You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.
You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood.
You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.
It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone.
And then there were the arrows.
The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.
You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands.
It should have been agony—any man would have cried out.
The prince does not so much as flinch.
You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there.
A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died.
A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.
A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.
But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.
The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life.
You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway.
You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever.
Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.
His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.
You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.
Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.
At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.
Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”
You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore.
You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.
The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.
You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince.
You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.
You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.
Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives.
When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death.
The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.
It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.
But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches.
Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.
Then you remind yourself that this is her doing.
Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of.
There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen.
You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded.
Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life.
You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince.
There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.
You—
“Who are you?”
There is a knife to your throat.
You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper.
“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”
You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.
Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back.
You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed.
For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive.
Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”
The prince stares at you.
As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns.
To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.
He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.
His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”
You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”
“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”
The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face.
Shame crosses his expression instantly.
“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”
He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet.
Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?”
You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers.
Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face.
“I suppose not.”
The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.
You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.
Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“I am fine,” he insists.
“You should sit, my prince.”
“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.
“Barely.”
The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days.
Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."
You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."
His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument.
You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries.
The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale.
Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles.
He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.
You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.
You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.
You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.
Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.
One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.
"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”
“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”
You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.
You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.
“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”
Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed.
You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”
His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.
“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”
Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table.
You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.
You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely.
“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”
“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”
How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then?
Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands.
Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.
Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away.
It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week.
You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.
“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?”
You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head.
“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours.
You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back.
You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing.
If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate.
It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.
Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—
You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.
“Sorry,” you say quietly.
“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”
“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”
“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”
You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”
“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”
It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread.
The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.
“I do not—”
“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”
Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.
If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him.
“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin.
What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head.
“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no.
“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”
He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed.
“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”
For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him.
Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind.
One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.
You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.
Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run.
He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer.
“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”
He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.
“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”
He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table.
“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”
You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.
With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better.
————————————
The sea is on fire.
Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries.
He tries to focus.
He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena.
He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.
Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—
—and Vermax is falling.
Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.
He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax.
Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.
Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe.
When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too.
There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.
But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time.
He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—
He wants his mother.
He just wants his mother.
He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.
And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.
The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.
And then—then all he remembers is sea.
White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—
“... prince, the stew is ready.”
Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…
The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—
You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.
He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.
He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.
Is he crying?
Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table.
Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger.
Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.
Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.
“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”
You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”
“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body.
Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.
He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.
You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”
“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”
You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.
“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well.
You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.
You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore.
“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”
“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips.
The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.
His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.
Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.
“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”
“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.
Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further.
“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”
You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.
“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”
You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.
That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away.
From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up.
You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely.
“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”
You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.
“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”
Jace opens his mouth.
He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.
He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here?
That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.
His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly.
You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.
He does not think he has ever felt less like the heir to a kingdom.



