Could I please request Maekerx2nd wife reader. Neither one really wants it, but you do your duty. She starts falling for him but doesn’t think he will ever return the feelings so she tries to avoid him as much as possible, he thinks she hates him until he confronts her and the truth is revealed.
Thanks so much!
Hi Anon! Thank you so much for the request, this was so much fun to write and I hope I did it justice!!
This Was Not Duty For Me
Maeker Targaryen x wife!reader—in which, he fell first and he fell harder, you just didn't know.
TW: 18+ MDNI; there is a sex scene, not long, just the wedding night. The reader is straight forward, mention of losing her mother. Reader is a good mother. I don't know. I think that's it!!
You were daughter of a Lord, a daughter in a world of marriage and alliances and tasks. A daughter in a land that needed you for one purpose and one alone.
Children.
Fertility, a womb, a place for children to grow. That was what the world required of you, nothing more and nothing less. A mother who could raise the children with a gentle hand, curbing them and waiting for their lord father to make them what he needed them to be. A womb for the husband and a mother for the child.
That was what your world made you.
All it made you.
You had reconciled yourself to your purpose from the time you were a child, from the time you were told that you would one day marry. Told that as if it were the only thing witch which you should be pleased by. The only thing that truly mattered.
The best that you could do.
And you have been waiting, waiting to find which lord would choose you, wish to pluck you like a flower from the gardens, one to put on display in a vase, watered and loved only until it starts to wilt, wither and die, then replaced by the next.
You have been waiting to become the cut flower, the one that only lives so much longer. Because once a flower is plucked from the gardens, it does not have long to live.
It blooms, is cut and withers, fades away.
And you have been waiting to become another withered bloom in a kingdom full of dying flowers.
You just didn’t think it would be today. You had fooled yourself into thinking you had more time, more freedom. More life.
You were wrong.
So very, very wrong.
“Which Targaryen, Father?” you ask, throat thick with tears, the mucus feeling clawing from your throat up to your mouth, tongue becoming thick. “Which one am I to marry?” Your father looks at you now, apology for the first time seen in his eyes, those eyes which match yours, his lips twisting down in apology, hands folding together, gnarled, withered fingers twisting around each other, rings rattling at the touch.
“Prince Maeker, the fourth born son of our good King,” he tells you, tone striving to be imperious and powerful, but falling, failing. You know he wanted more for you, his youngest daughter. You know he wanted a young lord for you, one that would be fit to be with you, one that could grow into love, but one cannot refuse the royal family.
It matters not how powerful your father is: When the royals call, all lords must answer.
And in this answer, your father has had to trade you. His precious daughter.
“I see,” you whisper, your hands clasped in front of you as you look down, bowing your head, tears lining your eyes as your lips press into a thin line, chest constricted and breathing hard. It’s not that the idea of princess is not appealing, it is the fact that you are to spend your life with a man who will never love you.
A man who publicly vowed to never love again.
You had always hoped that in your marriage, you would find a form of love, a form of affection and attachment. That you would be lucky like your mother and father and your…betrothed and his first wife. That luck of finding love in that whom was chosen for you.
But like most girls, your hopes are crushed with an iron fist—in your case, iron throne.
***
“You would truly marry this girl just to spare her from your sons?” Baelor asks Maeker now, the two of them waiting, standing stiff and rigid outside of the Red Keep, awaiting your arrival, awaiting the sigil of your house on cloth banners.
“My sons are not fit for marriage,” Maeker hisses, body rigid, frown firmly set, hands clasped and eyes focused solely on the road ahead. “One is a drunkard, one is a scholar and one is a cruel bastard. I would not saddle any woman to them, let alone one as kind as she.” Baelor looks over at his youngest brother, the way his jaw is clenched so tight that it is a miracle he still has teeth at all and the way his fingers tap an anxious rhythm against each other.
“You swore—”
“I know what I swore,” Maeker interrupts, turning to look at his brother with a fury in his eyes, a fury that few see and survive. He earned the name of the Anvil, not by being kind and someone who listens; he earned it for his brutality and cruelty. “I also know that this girl deserves better.”
“This girl,” Baelor whispers, his voice dropping as your carriage crests on the horizon, “deserves someone who can love her. A service you cannot provide.”
Those words sink into Maeker, hitting him with the force of a thousand hits of war, the idea of his act of saving really being the harm having never have occurred to him. And he wonders if you would have been better suited to his sons, would have brought out the good in them, brought out something in them.
If he should have let you find a love your own age.
“Many marriages are loveless, brother,” he replies instead, doing his best to shove the worries aside, to push past them, ignore them. Pretend they do not exist, that they are not valid. “She will learn that this is better. I may not provide love but at least I shall give security.”
“Maybe this girl does not want security,” Baelor whispers, the final word soon to be his as your carriage stops before them, the design simple and sleek. “Maybe she wants magic. Something you have not been able to provide for many years.” And in his words, Maeker can hear his brother’s grief, his oft repeated line Dyanna died and even though you are still here, you act like you are dead too. I feel like I burned my brother along with his wife and am now haunted by his image, his ghost.
“Brother—” he begins, but the carriage door opens, your Lord Father stepping out, holding his hand out to you, a radiant bloom, one that is pristine and preserved, as if behind glass. A flower to look at and never to touch.
“My lady!” Baelor calls out, stepping forwards, a smile growing across his face, one that is kind and gracious and real. Realer than anything he has seen on his brother’s face in a long while. “I trust your travel was fair?”
“As fair as travelling in a carriage with only one’s father for company can be,” you answer, your voice soft and lilting, carrying through the air with warmth and humour and lightness and Maeker can feel something inside him crack and crumble at the same time because he has only heard warmth like that when his love was alive, was wandering the castle, filling the corridors with laughter and cheer.
With love.
“My poor daughter,” your father chimes in, a smile gracing his face, one that is as real as Baelor’s, “has been trapped with me in an enclosed space for days. I fear that she cannot wait to get married if only to get away from me!” He breaks into a laugh as you turn back to him, a menacing look on your face, one that only succeeds in making him laugh harder and it is not hard to see from where you have gotten your warmth, your easy nature.
“Your mother was not able to accompany you?” Baelor asks and Maeker feels that familiar chill, the one of grief, of sudden loss and he watches as you and your father still, smiles becoming tight, strained.
“My mother passed away a few moons ago,” you answer, smile drawing sadder yet no less genuine, shifting to another form of joy, one tinged by loss yet also gain. One that Maeker has never seen; he has withdrawn, become cold, Daeron a drunkard, Aemon a scholar, Aerion a monster, Daella a demanding princess always irritated by some imagined slight, Aegon a loud and reckless terror, Rhae a little girl who woke with nightmares every night wandering to his bed asking him where’s my mama? a woman she has no memory of.
A woman who died to give her life.
“I’m so sorry, my lady, lord, for your loss,” Baelor says and when you flick your gaze to Maeker, he realizes that he has not spoken to you once, not said a single word of greeting. Not even my lady.
Nothing.
Maybe he is a ghost in his own skin.
“It is fine, Your Grace,” you answer, curtseying as if you had forgotten and possibly you had, but it truly does not matter because not even Maeker worried over the loss of decorum. He had not cared.
And that is his first sign that you mean something.
To him, that is.
“My lady,” he calls out now, his voice too loud, too gruff for the environment now. He curses it, the sound of it, the loudness but he notices that you don’t look shocked, you just look at him. Like looking at him is just something not anything important or hurtful. “Would you tour the gardens with me? Stretch your legs after a long ride?” His question is gruff and he expects you to refuse but you surprise him by nodding.
“Of course, Your Grace,” you reply, a small curtsy the other response. And then you are beside him, your hand enclosing around his elbow, grip light like a faerie touch, the scent of you—old books and some sort of flower—overwhelming him, intoxicating in its entirety. Intoxicating in the way that it overwhelms him, so distinct from Dyanna, a woman so gentle, scented with jasmine and roses, distinct and solid scents, ones that spoke of both Dorne and King’s Landing.
Her land and her home.
“I am so—” he begins but he does not manage much before you cut him off, holding your hand up to silence him as the two of you step through to the gardens together, steps in sync.
“Let us not pretend, my prince,” you tell him, voice strong, made of steel, just the faintest hint of brittleness in your tone, “that this is anything but duty. I must marry and your family has made you remarry, so this was a pairing that happened but it is not anything more than that. You need a mother for your youngest child, someone to rein in your elder children while you do what princes do and I shall be that, but you insult me by trying to make a mockery of me.”
“I intended no insult,” he tells you, bristling at the abruptness, the rudeness of your words while also cracking at the raw aching and vulnerability in you, in your voice and tone. It makes him realize how little you want this but also what little choice you have—you are a woman after all.
“No and that is the worst part. You do not intend insult and yet it happens anyways. That is the thing with men raised in power, you do not know the struggle of the women and what you think is proper is really just insulting so pleasedo not try to reason with me or say that is more than duty when I know it is not.” You look away from him, glancing down at the ground, the cobbled walk through the green of the grass, the gardens emerging before you, servants caring for the lawns, boys training to be men fighting in the yard.
And Maeker wants you to look at him.
It’s respectful to look at him, is all.
“You are quite opinionated, my lady,” he says, his tone brittle, rigid, angered and you look up at him, eyes flaring with an emotion he does not know, has never seen before yet has a feeling it is all he will see.
“Opinions are not truth,” you reply, your lips pressing into a thin line, the appearance making him want to press his thumb to them, try to even them back to normal, help them heal from the pressure, “and what I speak is truth. Do not pretend, my prince, that will ever be love when I know it will not be.”
“You know this?” he asks you, his tone arch as the two of you depart, stepping from the green onto the garden path, a fountain ahead.
“You were the one who publicly vowed to never love another,” you remind him, turning your head, attention falling on the flowers, falling on the careful way they’re tended to look wild while reminding everyone that nothing wild lasts.
That everything is tamed.
Even if it requires breaking them.
“You are right, my lady,” he tells you, voice low and rough, teeth gritting at the admission. He doesn’t like assuring you of the fact that you are right, he knows somehow that you will be more insufferable about it. The fact that he cannot deny your knowledge. “But I can give you security and a good life; a title as a princess. Is that not enough?”
You look up at him, a faraway gaze in your eyes before you blink, focusing back on him, lips still pressed thin. “It is enough, it is just not what I wanted. I had hoped for love, but I know now…” you pause, sighing and looking down, the gesture not structured or planned, designed to bring him rage or anger, rather just you. “I know now that that was simply a little girl’s fantasy. Not proper for the real world, my prince.”
“You will be well-cared for, my lady,” he assures you, feeling the need to give you something since he cannot give you your girlhood dream, the wish you still cling to in your heart.
“I have no doubt, my prince,” you say and the words, while said softly and sadly, give him a form of peace. A form of happiness and it is strange.
You are strange.
But strangeness is not cruelty nor stupidity and in truth, it is refreshing. You are so blatantly you that he never has to fear you hiding from him. You will give it to him as you see it, hear it, feel it.
You do not hide.
“My lady,” he interrupts the silence of the walk, his voice cutting through the sounds of wind in the trees, in the flowers and leaves; the sound of birds and insects, the chitter and chatter of nature. “I do not intend a mockery or insult with my question, but would you at least consider that we could be…friends perhaps?” He waits, for once understanding the saying of bated breath because he holds his breath, waiting for your reply. Your answer somehow mattering to him.
“Yes,” you tell him, a small smile growing on your lips, the kind of shared mischief, “I think we could manage that.”
***
It is scarcely dawn when you are awoken by banging on your door. Loud, frantic knocks that terrify you, the sound not unlike the morning you were awoken when your mother died, your father on the other side, broken and crying, shattered. A man laid bare by loss.
“Open this door, now!” calls a young, imperious voice, accompanied by open-handed smacks on the wood. You sigh and roll from the bed, taking your dressing gown and belting it over your nightgown, shuffling to the door, one arm bracketed around your stomach, the other smoothing your hair as you reach the door, pulling it open to reveal a girl of olive skin, dark hair and the piercing violet eyes of the Targaryen blood.
The eyes that glimmer with a look like death.
“What do you want, Princess Daella?” you ask, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and one eyebrow arched. No curtsy, no deference. Nothing.
“You will come with me, now,” she says and you shake your head, sighing once and stepping back into your rooms, hand going to the doorframe, preparing to close it.
“No,” you tell her and you watch as those eyes lit with a cruel and venomous gleam, dim, confidence waning and confusion reining in its place.
“I am a princess,” she says as if you need a reminder of her place, her position. Of the fact that one word from her bloodline can cause any noble lord to bend his knee.
“I don’t care,” you tell her, moving the door again, preparing to close it but stopping just slightly, it in line with the middle of your body, one half of you visible to her and the other hidden.
“Please?” she asks you and in her voice, you can hear that of a child mourning, that of a child lost. That of a woman who learned to be one without a guiding hand.
A girl who formed herself into what she thought she should be.
A girl who learned the measure of her bleed from a man not a mother.
A girl who only knows how to demand, never measured by a guiding hand.
A girl trying to be a woman without any idea of what one is.
“You know,” you begin, voice quiet, slightly lilting in the still morning air, “I lost my mother just five moons ago. I was awoken just like this morning to loud knocks on my door but instead of a spoiled princess on the other side who has learned that by being demanding she gets what she wants, I saw my father. Broken. And yet, even though my loss is newer than yours, I was expected to get up and travel here and marry your father. So, no, Princess. I will not. You want someone to guide you to be grown, find a better way of asking than demanding for we all carry our own scars. Yours does not make you special, Princess. Come back tomorrow when you have a better attitude.” And then you close the door.
And go back to bed.
***
The next morning, you rise, silence your companion as maids enter and help you dress, only the rustle of fabric upon your body and your hair swept up and away. The sounds of being noble, the sounds of being alone.
Because even in a room full of people you are alone.
And that was when you heard it—soft knocks on the door, delicate and quiet but no less present. It was why you stopped the maid that went to answer the door, instead doing it yourself, revealing Daella, more subdued in a gown of black and grey, her hair braided tight but no circlet of gold upon her brow. Rather, she looked like the child that she was.
“Princess,” you greet her, nodding your head, conscious of the way her violet eyes glimmer not with a Targaryen gleam of cruelty and venom, but instead of worry. Nervousness. Innocence.
“Would you please accompany me today, my lady?” she asks you, tone quiet, that of the child which she is, scarcely more than fourteen.
“I would, Princess,” you reply and then you step from the room, walking with her, your voices rising and falling through the stone corridors, echoing around, laughter and joy and peace. You learn that she is a girl who misses her mother, who needed her and she was not there. A girl who is trying to grow up without knowing how.
And you promise her that you are here now, that you will guide her. As is your role. As is what the marriage creates. You tell her that never will she be alone again, never will she go through pain alone again. You tell her that while you may not be her mother, you will be there for what her mother cannot be there for.
You tell her that you care, that you are here.
You tell her that you are not leaving.
And that was what she needed to hear. Precisely.
***
The next time Maeker sees his daughter, Daella, he sees not the demanding, irritated princess filled with scorn and ready with a harsh word for anyone. Instead, he sees a young girl with flowers in her hair and laughter in her eyes with kind words and pleasant manners.
He sees the girl he always thought she would grow into.
And he notices your proud smile. Your attentions.
And that stirring inside of him that he felt when he first saw you, that cracking and crumbling grows more.
Because you are repairing that which he cannot.
He does not know how he feels about that.
***
“Mama?” calls out a small voice, a frail voice. One cut through with terror, a tone that awakens you, pulling you from sleep as if it were your own child even though you have none. Will never have any of your own truly.
“Rhae?” you call out and you hear the shuffle of little feet, feel pressure on the bed and you sit up, adjusting, blinking your eyes as you watch a small shape of a child no more than three crawls onto your bed, towards you, one hand clutching a small object shaped like a star.
“Mama?” she asks again and then she’s flopping on you and you know what she is asking you. Are you her mother? Are you the mother that died when she was born?
“I will be,” you whisper and that admission is all she needs, burrowing deeper into you, whispering mama safeover and over as sleep pulls her down, little hands holding tight to you as you tuck her in under your blankets, holding her close, holding her against the fears of the world that she holds.
The fears that your presence seem to have managed.
At least for a little while.
***
The wedding is only days away when Maeker catches a glimpse of you in the gardens, head thrown back laughing, a full-bodied laugh, Rhae tucked up in your side, little hands holding onto you, Daella seated beside you, laughing with you as Aemon—Aemon—gesticulates wildly before you, re-enacting a scene of something.
And Maeker is taken aback because in that moment, he realizes that he has not been awoken by Rhae in many weeks. That Daella has not insulted anybody since your arrival and that the Maesters have stopped complaining of Aemon and his need for books and only books.
And the common key is you.
Somehow, in the short time you have been here, in the Keep, as his betrothed, you have begun to repair what Dyanna broke with her death, the thing that Maeker has not known how to fix, too buried in his grief, in himself.
In his own loss.
You have seen to the heart of his children in a way that he hasn’t been able to and even if it is only duty, this marriage, to the both of you, he knows now that he will you give the world if only because you have brought smiles back to half of his children.
You have done what he could never.
And for that, he will give you everything he can.
***
“You idiot,” you hiss, catching sight of Daeron, slumped and drunk, shirt coated in his own vomit, hair loose and lank, draped about his face. You shake your head, signalling for a maid, who approaches you with a smile, the staff of the Keep having grown to love you, you and the way you always acknowledge them and their efforts. The way you treat them as people. “Would mind bringing me a bucket of water? Cold, preferably, if that is possible, miss?”
“Of course, my lady,” she tells you, curtseying before you and then scurrying off as fast as she can to get you what you need as you walk cautiously towards the mass of a man on the floor before you. You nudge him with your toe, watching as he stirs, mumbling about fire and death and dragons and a queen of flowers emerging unscathed, a queen that brings salvation.
A dragon dreamer, you remember hearing. Dreams told in riddles to conceal dangerous truths.
Enough to drive anyone to insanity.
“Here you go, my lady,” the maid says, voice quiet and kind as you turn, taking the metal bucket from her, thanking her and dismissing the curtsey, telling her there is no need and then she departs and you lift the bucket, tossing the water over him, the water cold, cold enough to shock him, his body jolting to awareness, hand reaching for a dagger, movements too drunken to grasp anything at all.
“Get up, you fool,” you hiss, dropping the bucket, the sound of metal on stone echoing and he whines, his hands going to his ears, violet eyes squeezed shut against the light of candles, of flame.
“Go away,” he whispers and in response, you reach down and tuck your hands under his armpits, hauling him to his feet, pulling him up with a strength most people would be surprised you possess.
“You make a mockery of your family,” you tell him, voice louder than normal but by no means a yell, yet still something that makes him pull away from you, your steps sure and his sluggish, stumbling. “And that ends now. You have dreams that scare you,” you say as you reach his chambers, nodding at the guard to open them which he does, accompanying you as you haul the prince into his rooms, letting him drop onto the bed, “while so do other people. You have a family that needs you and a family that cares. You will change because I will make you.”
And then you walk away, leaving him to sleep, mumbling a curse in his sleep, one directed at you while you go to the staff, instructing them to limit his wine, a little more each day.
You will wean him off the substance, slowly but surely until he need it no longer, withdrawal not a bitch when done slower.
You should know.
You’ve done it for your father.
***
The wedding came too fast for Maeker’s liking, he would have preferred to stay alone and sullen, locked inside his room, using the last of Dyanna’s oils on what once was her pillow, trying to hold her too him even while the scent of you, of flowers and old books seems to permeate his mind, not even what once was Dyanna enough to drive it from his mind.
And now he is here, vowing to you before the Seven, vows which he does not think he can maintain. Vows he has sworn before, vows which he meant then. Vows which he first swore and still means, vows to Dyanna.
His only love.
And yet, the press of his lips against yours, the seal of the marriage sends a shock through his body, his skin feeling alive, no longer numb rather electric and pulsing. Like he was a ghost truly and your kiss has made him flesh again.
He does not know what to make of these strange feelings, nor what to make of the way you avoid him, rather finding his children, his son Daeron. Seeking out the children that you have vowed to take on as your own. You are no older than Daeron, in fact, you are younger—Aerion’s age—and yet you mother all of them.
He notes that now your touch has reached Daeron, his drunkard son no longer drunk, his hand enclosed around a cup of water, turning down the wine that people offer him with strained smiles, a smile that reads fuck off.
He notes that his children close around you, Daella on one side, Aemon on the other, Rhae on your hip and Daeron in front, talking and laughing and Maeker can feel that crumbling in his chest intensify because it looks, for all the world, like you and Daeron are the couple, surrounded by your children.
That your family is not with him, but with his son.
He doesn’t know why he cares. Only that he does.
***
The hall seems to stretch too long, too much distance to cover, knowing what must happen, knowing neither of you wants it but it must happen. Blood must dot the white sheet.
Which is why you follow Maeker, hands folded in front of you, fingers knotted together, knuckles white from holding onto each other as you walk, your two sets of footsteps echoing off the stone walls, the rowdiness of the ceremony still ricochetting off the walls, reaching you even now.
It had been a beautiful celebration, your new family most welcoming. All except the bridegroom who pressed a chaste, brief kiss to your lips with eyes closed and held breath.
The same man you must now lie with.
“I shall cut my hand,” he says now, the two of you on opposite sides of the bed, his lip curled in a sneer as he reaches for the dagger.
“No,” you tell him and he pauses, the blade hovering above his palm. “You will make a mockery of me in this way too, my prince? A wife who cannot even consummate a marriage? What would the court ladies think of me?”
“They would not know,” he protests and you shake your head, tears lining your eyes, stinging and you bite your lip, working it between your teeth.
“But I would,” you whisper, the sentence ragged and torn, dragged from your throat as an admission you did not want to give. You can see the change in Maeker, your husband, the change from a man just disinterested, to a man who cares.
You did promise friendship before.
“I shall ensure it does not hurt,” he whispers, setting the dagger back on his table, walking around to you. He unlaces your hands, setting them by your sides, his touch gentle, dangerously slow as he unlaces your gown, helping you out of it and your small clothes, laying you gently upon the bed, thumb tracing over your cheekbone in a tender gesture as he undresses himself, positioning himself lower, hands spreading your legs wide.
You feel exposed, a strange feeling in your lower belly, skin too tight and lungs not quite working right as he presses kisses to your inner thighs, that strange feeling in your belly growing hotter, coiling in a way that is new.
In a way that is strange.
His beard scratches at the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, his mouth finding the place between your legs, kisses pressed there that feel sinful, a strange wet feeling growing, that coil winding, breaths hitching. The feeling of him there is sinful, strange, but not unwanted.
You can scarcely feel anything at all, can barely think as he licks from entrance to clit, tongue working at you, fingers helping, the stretching and rubbing and shifting new and strange and painful but no less wanted.
You are barely more than a pool of sensations, the feeling so strange, so much that you feel hot all over, the scratching of his beard echoing throughout your entire body as he licks and thrusts and you come undone, the feeling so sinful that you feel disgraced until he rises, pushing into you, his hands taking yours, pressing them into the mattress as you hiss in pain.
He moves slowly and then waits until you tell him to move, that it’s okay and he continues, shifting into you, moving in and out, your blood upon him and the sheets, your maidenhood taken, given. You chose to give it to him and as he whispers praise, encouragement, you find you do not resent him nor regret it.
And it is done far sooner than you thought and he is beside you, his arms moving as if to hold you, but you rise on shaky legs, pulling your clothes back on, the evidence of your blood and release and his seed dripping down your scratched and sensitive thighs.
“Where do you go?” he asks you as you move, steps shaky, unsure.
“To my chambers, Your Grace,” you whisper, a strange thickness in your throat at the smell in the room, the smell of jasmine and roses, a woman who is not you, but rather that of the woman who had a place in his bed first.
A place in his bed always.
You realize that when you lay with him, you hoped. You hoped that maybe, just maybe, he would change, that something would come of this marriage but you can smell her all around you and you know.
There is no place for you in this life.
There never really was, only a small foolish part of your heart believed.
***
Maeker can feel your absence in the room as assuredly as he can smell you on the sheets, your scent so strong that he cannot smell Dyanna, the oils he spread around the room just this morning. Instead, he can only smell you, taste you, the earthy flavour of you lingering upon his tongue.
And he likes it, likes you, more than he cares to admit.
He needs you, wants you here beside him. Wants to hold you in his arms because you wanted him tonight. Or maybe, you truly did not want to be mocked, but whatever the reason, you moaned his name in a breathy way that he can still hear now.
And he wants you here, wants to hold you, wake to you in the morning, but since you have left, he contents himself to your pillow (he already thinks of it as yours, since it is your scent that lingers, not hers), holding it against his body, pretending.
Pretending, for the first time in three years, that it is not Dyanna.
No, he pretends that it is you.
***
Over the months, every interaction with Maeker only solidifies that feeling within you more, the feeling that yes, you have found in marriage, what you always wanted.
It is simply one-sided.
You are second to a woman who no longer lives. A woman who took your husband’s heart with her when she went.
And you aren’t even angry because you are the idiot who fell for a man who said he would never love another.
And most definitely, not you.
***
Maeker is frustrated. Extremely. Because he sees you everywhere in the castle yet you avoid him. You speak with Daeron, you study with Aemon, you train with Aegon—the boy no longer reckless, but rather well-behaved, attending all his lessons and boasting of his mother to all who will listen (the mother in question, being you)—shop with Daella and are never gone from Rhae.
You have even seemed to fix Aerion, the boy no longer a monster, but rather a prince with diplomacy, just an undercurrent of venom.
“You are a prince! Act like it, you motherfucking fool,” you had told him. “You resent your cousin so fucking be better than him. Don’t break people’s fingers when they displease you. You act polite and simply destroy them in a political, civil way. Be someone to proud of.”
You had even gone to Maeker, the one time that you had willingly sought him out, giving his heart reason to sing for weeks because you had looked at him. You had told him to spend time with his idiot son, that he wanted attention and so he should damn well give it to him for when he does good, not bad.
And he has.
And Aerion no longer destroys that which he touches, rather speaking diplomatically, keeping his opinions of being a dragon to himself.
You have repaired all the breaks in his children, but have only created more within Maeker. You have shattered him completely with your avoidance.
Every time he means to spend time with you and his children, you find some excuse to leave. Every time.
And he. Has had. Enough.
***
“Stop avoiding me!” Maeker yells out now, pushing into your chambers, face red and contorted with anger and irritation. “You are my wife and you do not even look at me. You said we could be friends and yet you do not even give me that!” You stand, sighing and setting your book aside, rising from the couch, reaching for your dressing gown, meaning to belt it but then he is there, stalling you, taking your hands in his.
His grip is warm and soft and hard all at the same time. He holds you like he needs too. Like he will break if he lets go, like you will disappear and he cannot have that. You swallow, feeling the thickening of your throat because the Seven are often cruel, but this is a new level.
This is taunting you with the care of a man you can never have.
A man who belongs to a dead woman, her ghost holding the place her body once held in life.
“I do not avoid you,” you say instead, pulling your hands from his, mourning the loss of contact as you step away from him, crossing your arms over your body, feeling vulnerable and exposed. “I simply have my duties as you have yours.”
“You avoid me,” he whispers, voice cracking. “I enter a room and you leave. You take dinner in your rooms if I am to be at the table. You raise my children but leave if I attempt to do so with you. Do you…” he pauses and you turn, noticing the way his face seems to fold, fall in on itself, doubt reflecting in those dangerous violet eyes.
Those perfect, beautiful eyes.
“Do I what?”
“Do you love someone else?” he asks and the question is so strange that you cannot help but release a bark of laughter, a cruel sound, cruel and cold and brittle. Ever so brittle.
“Do I love someone else?” you cry. “It is not I that loves someone else, my prince. It is you! No, I am the one who loves you! You who love a ghost!” And then the cracking laughter gives way to choked sobs and then he is there, pulling you against him and you are sobbing too hard to resist.
“I feared you loved my son,” he whispers into your hair as you cry, his hand rubbing soothing circles on your back. “But since you don’t, I may as well be honest with you.”
“Be—honest?” you choke out, pulling back just enough to look at him.
“I love you. I have from the day you arrived, I believe. And, this was never truly duty for me. I sought to save you from my sons because I saw something in you I thought they would break and I did not want them to break you,” he pauses, looking down at you, a hand rising to cup your cheek. “Perhaps I loved you before I knew you. Perhaps I chose to marry you because I loved you even then.”
“You useless fool,” you cry, the tears still pouring and he sighs, smiling just slightly at you, his own eyes filled with tears.
“I deserve that,” he whispers before leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to your lips, one that tastes of salt and despair and love and new beginnings. “Now, I believe you said I love you, but I do not think I heard you.”
“You mean I must repeat it?” you ask and he nods, the movement serious, but he not as betrayed by his smile. “Very well, husband. I love you, I love you, I love you.” And then he is kissing you again and again and again, steering the two of you towards the bed, whispering his own confession of love you every time he presses his lips to yours.
And as he lays you on the bed, the two of you hear the door creak open and he has just enough time to roll off of you, pulling you against him to hide the sight of his desire before Rhae appears, holding the stuffed star and looking tired.
“Mama, Papa,” she whispers, climbing up and onto the bed, landing right in between the two of you, “I had a nightmare again.”
“Shh,” you whisper, drawing her against you, smoothing back her white blond curls, “we’re here now. And we plan on going nowhere.”
And so, the three of you fall asleep in the bed, Rhae’s small body curled into yours, her hand on her father’s chest.
And your hand laced tight with Maeker’s, the two of you unwilling to let each other go even for sleep, needing to know that the other is real.
That this was not a dream.