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Treated Rhaenyra's first three sons as his own, bethroted his daughters to Jace and Luke, beheaded Vaemond for insulting Rhaenyra and her kids, also the only one who tried to get revenge for Luke. You can accuse Daemon of a lot of things but cannot say that he never loved Jace and Luke. He raised and loved those boys!!!
Goodbye Jacaerys Velaryon. We hardly knew you.
If I spent months suffering criston cole I'd look like that too
rhaenyra targaryen, the masctatted dread
Daemon probably: "Dark hair, same height...just need to teach him how to mew. Get up boy."
Two Sides to Every War—Ormund Hightower
Summary: Ormund was not always the man he is. He was once a gentle boy, one who fell in love with you, the second Targaryen daughter, the one rumoured to be only half-Targaryen. You fell in love with him too. What follows is a story of love, betrayal and deceit where the ties which bind you are tested by war, by loyalty and heart. By Black and Green. Only in the place between death and dying may the bonds be restored. (13k)
Pairing: Ormund Hightower x Targ!wife!reader
TW: 18+ MDNI, NSFW due to extreme graphic violence and sexual content. Sex scene includes:. fingering, oral f receiving, p-in-v and possible scent kink; I love giving origin stories to crazy guys and this is it; Rhaenrya ends up Queen as she always should have; Reader matches Ormund; No physical description of reader except that she doesn't have Targaryen features; Reader has magic (foresight surrounding battles); Faith of the Seven wedding; Cannibal is the reader's dragon; reader has kids; Jace lives (Reader takes the arrows for him); Ormund's like SERIOUSLY in love; mentions of Ormund being abused by his father (religious abuse).
Credit & A/N: GIF by @ladythedrunken, sword divider by @diviniyae; ran out divider space. I hope you guys like the story, it's my first HotD fic.
The Meeting:
The halls of the Keep were dark and cold and angry, if such a thing can truly be attributed to walls; the stench of blood and dragons and rot clinging to the stonework. Ormund didn’t like it, his father having instructed him long ago in the fact that the Targaryens are sinful, that they are rot and ruin and destruction, driving the land to chaos.
“Disgusting dragon riders,” he whispers, scuffing one booted foot along the carved stone floor.
“That’s not very nice, now is it?” a voice calls out from the shadows, one light and young and pretty, lilting through the air, echoing off the coldness like fire, wrapping him in warmth. He looks around, craning his head to catch a glimpse of the speaker, but he sees nothing. Nothing but stone and torches and tapestries and shadow.
“Who is there?” he calls out, his voice still young, still that of a child, the boy of seven which he is, the one tryingso hard to be a man for his father. To show his father that he’s worthy of the Hightower name, the seat, the power.
“It is I, the ghost that haunts these hallowed halls,” the voice continues, a bit of laughter contained in the wavering soprano sound.
“The ghost of what?” he asks, turning fully now in circle after circle looking, looking, looking and seeing nothing. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“You don’t believe ghosts?” the voice says, the words lilting up in a question yet tinged with a darker edge, a blade over his neck threatening to fall. “You, who live in the time of dragons and dragon riders. You, who live in the time of witches and magic and power, don’t believe in ghosts?” The voice seems to come from everywhere all at once, surrounding him with the darkening, deepening edge.
“N-no,” he stutters, straightening his shoulders, attempting to regain his composure, his power. The strength of the Hightower blood, the one not tainted by sin as his father says.
“You are a fool,” the voice says, blunt and cruel and tinged with hatred, anger. Disdain. Disdain for him? The Hightower heir? “And I am the ghost of the Dragon Queen.”
“There is no such Dragon Queen in our history,” he says, now fully believing that it is simply a figure he cannot see, crossing his arms with the arrogance that only a seven year old lord can have.
“History is told by the victors, young Hightower,” the voice says. “Not the losers. Not the women who serve only as tools in the narrative you men create.”
“You speak in blasphemy,” he says and above him he hears rustling. He looks up just as you drop down, dressed in riding clothes, landing on the stone floor in a crouch, eyes narrowed on him, cold and cruel and assessing despite the youth in your cheeks, the innocence that seems to radiate from you. “You are no ghost.”
“You’re quite the genius, aren’t you?” you counter, crossing your small child arms over your chest, big eyes rolling at him in annoyance. “I am the Princess Targaryen at your service.”
“You are not Princess Rhaenyra,” he says, having already met the silver-haired, tainted blood offspring of a poisoned, corrupted king.
“There are two princesses, you idiot,” you reply, eyes rolling once again and he struggles to see you as a child of five, a shadow haunting your eyes that makes you seem infinitely older.
“You are the half-borne,” he says, no malice in his tone yet your face twists, pinches, curls inwards, rage shimmering in your non-Targaryen eyes.
“Rhaenyra is my twin,” you hiss, stepping closer to him, your small chubby finger jabbing into his chest with more force than he expected. “Borne seven minutes before me. It does not matter if the rumours are true and we came from the same womb or not. I am her twin and she is mine. I am her other half, her opposite.”
“If you are her twin,” he says, reaching forwards to touch your hair, feel it in his fingers, but you slap it away with your other hand, such force for a girl of five. “Then why are you not…” he trails off, unsure of how to word what he wants to say, unable to play the diplomatic game like his father.
“Not Targaryen?” you finish and he nods, your eyes rolling again and he wants to say that it is insolence to your better, but technically your station is higher than his and even though tainted blood runs through your veins, Ormund feels a strange sort of power. The kind that one would bend the knee for, serve for when there is no one else like it. “I am the darkness and she is the light.”
“What do you mean dark? Light? There are no such denominations in the Seven,” he says, already knowing his scripture more than his history, Oldtown for piety and true faith. Not like King’s Landing, like the Keep. Like the Targaryens.
“You cannot find everything in your gods, young Hightower,” you whisper, stepping back from him. “I am the dark because I will do whatever she will not. I will cross any line.” With that, you smile once, a smile that makes you look like the five year old you are before melting backwards into the shadows.
In the space of one breath and the next, Ormund finds that you are gone. Completely. Faded away like you were never there at all.
And yet…Ormund is left the idea that perhaps tainted blood does not mean tainted people.
Perhaps…perhaps his father is wrong.
The General:
Ormund is back in King’s Landing, sent by his father to see his uncle, his cousins. A diplomatic exercise, one where one must learn to see their enemies’ weaknesses in order to exploit them later on the battle, but he wishes that were still home. Still in Oldtown, waking in his bed, the familiar scent of prayer rather than the lingering stench of human refuse and dragon.
“Come on! Is that the best you can do?!” a voice, familiar and pretty, yet edged like a sharp drawn sword echoes along the stone walls and he steps forwards, away from the carriage which brought him back to the Keep, away from his family, towards the sound. The one he’s held onto since he was seven.
The one of power unmatched despite the tainted blood.
The one that made him question—makes him question—his father’s rulings. Beliefs. Makes him want to know himself and what he thinks rather than what he was told to believe.
“Princess,” replies an aggrieved, tired voice, accompanied by the clang of metal on metal, a sword blade hitting a sword blade. “I will hurt you if I give you all I have.”
“Ser Rickon,” your voice replies, cocky and light and soothing to the now fourteen year old Ormund. Soothing in ways he doesn’t entirely understand. “I’ve been holding back too.” Ormund steps around the bend of the Keep, taking in the sight of the training yard, of you the Targaryen-not-Targaryen bedecked in fitted armour, holding a sword and clashing, pushing back against the fully grown, aged Kingsguard with a fury in your movements that he could never track. Not completely.
He knows, without a doubt, that anyone set against your blade would lose. It seems like you hold the ability toknow your opponent’s next move before they do. Anticipate and change your strike for soon the Kingsguard is on the ground, his sword kicked aside and your blade pressing against the hollow of his throat.
“I shall speak to my father,” he hears you say, stepping back and offering one hand to the man, which he takes, letting you haul him to his feet with more strength than one would expect from a girl of twelve. A princess no less. “Training must be improved. If this is what protects our lives…pity.” You turn, eyes scanning the yard, settling upon him, lips curling back in a smile that is strange and delightful as you lift a singular gloved hand up to wave at the same the guard comes up behind you for a stealth attack, one you’ve already anticipated, stepping to the side, his body collapsing on the ground. “Honestly, Ser Rickon! You do not fight in the yard when a lady’s back is turned! Manners, Ser. Manners.”
“You’re quite good, Princess,” Ormund calls out, aware of the way your gaze has never left him even as you kick the guard in the side lightly as he lets out a broken chuckle, your steps moving up the hill towards him, his family behind him. He can practically hear the gears turning in his uncle’s head, Otto forever trying to figure out ways to make the throne a Hightower affair, his in truth.
But all Ormund cares about is you—the ghost of the mythical Dragon Queen, the darkness to Princess Rhaenyra’s light.
“I’m not bad,” you reply, now stopping before him, digging the point of your elaborate sword into the ground, stepping towards him, offering him your metal gloved hand for a shake. One he takes, a strange urge inside of him to feel your skin against his. To feel what you would feel like, if your hand would fit to his as if by the Seven’s creation. “But I have a long time to improve.”
“Why do you practice?” Ormund asks, his uncle’s scoff audible behind him, his cousin Alicent’s small laugh, your eyes narrowing past him at them, lip curling and jaw setting before you turn back to him.
“Because one day,” you whisper, stepping closer, your hand still in his as you pull him to you, your bodies close yet not touching, “I will be a general. I will fight for my honor, my sister’s and the throne. Your family does not believe a woman can do so…I say,” you pull back, letting go of his hand, lips curved in a smirk as your eyes turn behind him, no doubt focused on his uncle, “all the more reason to prove the fuckers wrong.”
You spin, turning away, the back of your armour, emblemed with a singular dragon appearing to claw up and off your back, hand reaching forwards, grabbing the sword from the dirt, sheathing it on the strange contraption on your back and walking away as his uncle sputters about manners, propriety.
Everything that being a princess is—but being a general is not.
“The General Targaryen,” Ormund muses beneath his breath, watching as you walk away, the only Targaryen seemingly free of the curse of taint and sin and disgust. The only one who seems proper even if you break all the rules. “The General Hightower.”
He likes the sound of that title better. But not for him.
He likes it for you.
He just doesn’t yet understand why.
The Betrothal:
“Sister!” Rhaenyra calls out, her voice arching through the room, bouncing off the stone walls, surrounding you with the lightness. The lightness that has been darkening as all has come to pass. All that you have foreseen, all that you have known. All that you have plotted for and against.
“You are betrothed, I presume,” you call out as she steps into the room, her crown upon her head, the Princess of Dragonstone in entirety.
“I don’t like it when you do that,” she says and you twist on the stool before your dressing table, taking note of the way her face is drawn tight, the expression only slightly more open than before. You remember when she yelled at you, screamed and cursed the fact that you let the marriage between Alicent and your shared father commence.
It did not matter if you have seen there was no way to circumvent the union, only options before you to ensure your sister’s throne. She was angry and hurt that she did not know. She took it out on you, only now doling out bits of her love and attention, warming back up to you just in time for you to lose her again.
“I can’t help it,” you reply, folding your hands over your knee, fingers interlaced, her hands twined in the dark red skirts of her gown. “It is my gift.”
“You don’t mean that,” she says, her voice soft in a way it hasn’t been in so long, her face crumpling in on itself as she steps in, collapsing upon your bed, her body seeming to fold in on itself. “You think it’s a curse, don’t you?”
“No,” you tell her, the words thoughtful in only the way that true honesty can ever be. “I view it as useful neither gift nor curse, but a tool. If I didn’t…” you pause, tears stinging at your eyes, tears that you refuse to let fall because it is not strong, it is not what a future general does. Not what the Hand of the Queen does.
“If you didn’t what?” she asks and you look at her, your perfect, precious sister, still yet untainted by the blood of war, of the scent of death, things you have lived a thousand times every night, death after death after death as you struggle to find that way to victory. The way to win. You’ve died a thousand times every night, working towards that gleaming thread of victory, of your sister on the Iron Throne.
“I didn’t, I would break under the weight of what I see,” you whisper, looking down at your hands, the ones interlaced over your knee, together. Everything is stronger when there are more.
“Father always said we dream in cryptic ways,” she says, rising from the bed, her movements graceful and princess-like. Everything you are not from the silver hair to the violet eyes and the courtier way that she moves. “Yet nothing you dream is cryptic. Is it?”
“No,” you answer, looking up with haunted eyes, only half here and half in those tangling threads, things to unravel, to solve. To solve before the dragons dance and blood runs through the streets, painting cities red. “It’s just not quite clear.”
“I see the future Lord Hightower has been writing,” she says, her gaze snagging on a letter, one scrawled in Ormund’s careful, pious hand. “And here I thought the Lord Hightowers hated us.”
“Otto, Alicent and Gwayne do not,” you counter. “They are friendly.”
“They are not the shepherds of Oldtown,” Rhae counters, lifting the letter, her eyes scanning what’s been written in his hand, the pledges of friendship, of faith. Of belief. “He believes in you. In the Hand of the Queen.”
“Shut up, Rhae,” you hiss, reaching and pulling the letter from her hand, the paper crinkling in your touch as you lay it aside, the scent of sandalwood still clinging to the paper. He douses his papers with it, said in the first one that he wanted it to be as if he were there, as if he were speaking to you.
“You have a plan,” she says and you look at her, lips pursing, one eyebrow arched.
“I always have a plan. You just don’t always know what it is—nor do I.” Your serious expression lasts for only a moment before the two of you are laughing, the sound like the times of girlhood, of innocence.
Before the real world reared its ugly head and prophecy overcame reality.
Before your sister was set to marry a Velaryon.
Before you had to sacrifice the freedom you’d been promised long ago.
All for the Queen on the Iron Throne.
“Father?” you call out, stepping into his solar, boots scuffing along the seam between rug and stone. “Father, I need to speak with you.”
“Come in, my darling,” he calls out and you follow the sound of his voice, crossing through the darkened rooms to where his desk rests, his body folded into the chair behind it. “What’s wrong? What have you foreseen?”
“Many things. Wars and blood and Iron Thrones,” you reply, crossing the room to collapse into the second seat before his desk, leather clad legs tossed over one of the armrests, back against the other. “I have seen ways to ensure that Rhae is queen for a long, long time.”
“Is that why you are here? To ensure it?” he asks and you look at him, your hand pulling the Valyrian steel blade from its sheath, the one Daemon gave you while Rhae got the pretty useless necklace.
“Yes,” you tell him, pressing the tip of the blade against the soft pad of your index finger, twirling and finding the lack of pain startling and yet so useful. “I need you to marry me off.”
“You wanted freedom. I promised you that.”
“I need that promise broken,” you tell him and his lips purse, his expression darkening but he nods, consenting, assenting, relenting.
“Daemon has been looking for a new bride—”
“No,” you cut your father off, shaking your head and tipping your head back to look at the stone ceiling, the one carved by hands over centuries for the people with the blood of dragons in their veins. The conquerors who never understood the power of the individual. “The Hightower boy.”
“Gwayne? Very well,” your father says and your lip curls as you look back to him, teeth grinding against one another, a squeaking sound in your ears. Loud and abrasive.
“No, the one to be the lord,” you tell him and he cocks his head at you, the look he has when assessing you and you do not know what he sees, but you can see something in his eyes.
“They don’t like us,” he says and you shrug, kicking your legs up and over, sitting up straight in the chair, ignoring the twinge of pain in your lower back from the press of the armrest.
“It doesn’t matter. Power is a potent aphrodisiac, Father. You should know better than anyone.”
“I shall send a message,” he says. “We shall go from there.” You rise from the seat, nodding once at him, turning to go, to leave, but he stops you with his next words. “I am sorry, you know.”
“For what?” you ask, the words scraping against the sides of your throat, rough and painful in a way that you rarely let anything be.
“For marrying her. I know what it’s done to Rhaenyra, to you. And I am sorry, but it was necessary.” It is no secret that publicly Rhae has always had your father’s favour, but you are the son he never had. You are the soldier, the knight, the general. The one with magic, with skill. The one who sees no lines, only what must be done.
“They will not say no,” you tell him and with that you leave, gritting your teeth, setting your jaw as a single lone tear slips down your cheek, trailing over your skin with a searing, burning feeling that feels far more painful than any fire from any dragon.
Even if your own dragon, Cannibal, burned you.
“The Targaryens want you to marry the that second borne daughter,” Ormund’s father says, tossing the official parchment onto the table in disgust, his lip curling as he tosses his letter opener aside, the metal clanging against the wood of the table. “What a disgrace.”
“Father,” Ormund whispers, swallowing hard, the memory of your last letter, the sight of the places where you had pressed your quill deeper, the scent of your skin lingering on the paper burning deeper inside of him because why would he settle for letters when you could be his. When he could be yours.
He understands now that he loves you. That he has since he was seven and you, the impossible five year old dropped from the sky. That he has since he saw you defeat the Kingsguard, since he wanted you to be General Hightower, not Targaryen.
That he has even long before he learned that you were the one chosen by the fiercest and largest dragon of them all. An abominable creature of course but…was it really so bad? So sinful?
Ormund doesn’t know. Only that he wants to be yours.
“What is it, boy?” his father says, looking at him, Hightower green eyes narrowed, nostrils flared.
“Power is important. It would put us closer to saving the realm…a proper ruler, one day,” he says, swallowing hard again, but not from want this time, but rather fear. Fear that his father will hear the love he has for you, will try to beat it out him, reinforce the idea that you are sinful. A disgrace. A rot to be carved away.
“You want to marry her?” he asks, tone already deepening, darkening but Ormund holds true, nodding, setting his jaw to appear strong, fierce and not scared.
“Purify the line,” he says and he holds his breath as his father looks away, eyes narrowing before finally nodding, assenting.
“Very well, my boy. You shall have her.”
The Courtship:
The only thing that makes King’s Landing tolerable is knowing that you are here, that soon instead of the stench that clings to everything here, he will smell you, that strange perfume of your skin that is at once both sweet and strong. The strange perfume that he wants to have surrounding him at all times, you with him in truth.
But he would settle for your scent if you had to be away.
“The princesses are out riding, my lord,” one of the servants says, bowing low, eyes not meeting his, rather focused on his boots. Ones that shone in Oldtown, but here in the Keep have already picked up a fine layer of dust. Disregard as the rest of this place. He will be glad to have you out of it.
“Riding what?” he asks, but he needn’t have for he can hear the loud, overloud, sound of wings beating air, fast and furious and all too large. He turns, glancing out at the training yard, noticing Cannibal and Syrax both, growing larger as they near.
Cannibal had never been seen before he bonded you when you were four, saved you from danger and no one had any idea why he did so, only that he refused to let anyone near you and stayed under your window for the entire time you were a child.
You spoke to him before any courtier, it is said.
But Vhaegor was believed to be the largest of the dragons, until Cannibal. He can see how huge he is now as he dips to the side, his body canting and you leap from him, your figure small and dark as you land on the ground, your body rolling into a ball, rolling before you land on your feet, Cannibal already turned around, flying away.
Meanwhile, Syrax lands, dipping a wing and letting Princess Rhaenyra off gently, ensuring she is safe before departing after yours.
“You must have a death wish, dear sister,” he hears Rhaenyra exclaim, your laughter sounding in the yard as you loop your arm around her neck, pulling her in close before marching onwards, closer to him.
“I only do what you will not,” you reply, your voice light, still ringing with your laughter and he finds himself suddenly nervous, hands shifting to adjust his doublet, ensuring that it’s straight and he puffs out his chest, his heart speeding up when you look at him, your eyes narrowing, lips pursing before you break away from your sister, walking towards him. “Hello.”
“H-hello,” he stutters, swallowing hard at the end of his words, your scent overwhelming, intoxicating. He feels slightly ashamed of his reaction to you, the way you change him from the strong heir to Oldtown to a stuttering young boy crushing for the first time, but when you smile at him, he finds he does not care.
“I have to change,” you tell him, reaching forwards, your hand finding his, fingers interlacing with his and all the blood seems to leave his body, rushing to all different places in his body at the feeling of your bare skin against his.
He wondered what it feel like, if it would mold to his and you do. It’s like you were made for him, like the Seven had intended this to be. Like the two of you were forged for one another. He follows after you, blood pulsing in his head as you drag him through hallway after hallway, up stairway after stairway before stopping outside an ornate door.
“Wait here,” you tell him, disappearing inside the room, the door closing behind you and he does, waiting patiently, leaning against the wall, interlacing his hands together in front of him, pretending that his hand is yours. That you are still touching him as casually as you did.
Touching him like you loved him as he loves you.
It’s no time at all before the door is pushed open and you step out, in a deep black gown, interspersed with bits of red. He swallows hard, his mouth feeling dry, like the wetness typical of a mouth has fled all of a sudden to his palms. He wipes them on his breeches as discreetly as he can but by the way your eyes track the movement, he knows you noticed.
“You look…” he trails off, his eyes tracing every line of your figure, caught up in your beauty, unsure of quite how to express the fact that he thinks you are a goddess. The most beautiful woman to ever live.
“Like a princess?” you ask and he startles, looking back up and meeting your eyes, nodding once, the movement jagged.
“Yes.”
“You and I should probably become used to it,” you remark, stepping forwards and taking his hand again, looping it around your arm, “as this is how I must dress to be your Lady Hightower.”
Your voice is resigned and he wants to tell you that he would never cage you as his lady, that he wants you, the General, but he cannot find the words for it.
So, he says nothing at all.
The gardens are well-tended, perfectly maintained, but even the scents of the prettiest flowers cannot cover up the permeating scent of rot that lingers in the courtyard, in the Keep. In all of King’s Landing.
But your scent, your touch is enough. It’s intoxicating to him, truly, the way your hand fits into and against his, the way your fingers fit the grooves between his as if you were always meant to hold his hand, as if this was fated, created. Deemed truthful by the Seven.
“How d—” he breaks off, pausing, bending his bend before the statue of the Mother, her effigy in the grounds. He feels you still, imagines you bent like him, paying respect to the idol of the god, one the many seven faces.
“You truly believe?” you ask and he jerks his head, a twinge of pain in the far back, like something snapping, his eyes wide with the surprise and shock coursing through his veins.
“You do not?” he asks and you shake your head, eyebrows arching as your free hand strays to your hip, stance asymmetrical as you look at him.
“I do not believe in your gods, no,” you tell him, your eyes flitting up and away towards the sky, eyes shuttering for just a moment, a thousand reflections of emotions glimmering in those perfect, precious eyes of bravery and truthfulness.
“Why not?” he asks and you look back at him, lips curving with a smile as if you cannot look at him without feeling joy.
“Because I do not believe in gods that do not exist. I believe in the gods in the world I can see. The Old Gods, the gods of nature. The ones who listen when you must pray. The ones who created us, but gave us the freedom to live. I believe that everything that happens is because of what we do. Not some mythical seven faced thing,” you tell him, your voice lilting and rising, shifting through the air like he always imagined a goddess would sound.
“But your father—”
“My father does not know what he believes,” you counter, gesturing at the effigy of the Mother which stands before the two of you, the one gleaming in the sun, heat broiling off of the marble in strange visual waves. “He acts like a follower of the Seven, but it is not true. He does not go to sept or prayer. He rules and plays the sides that he must play.”
“But the Seven are the only gods that truly matter,” Ormund counters, the lifetime of learning and prayer rearing within him. Lessons beat into him by his father’s hand, his belt, his knife, the fireplace pokers with red-hot ends.
“No,” you whisper, your expression softening on the edges, gaze going dreamy as if you remember something. “I do not believe in gods that cannot hear the prayers of the believers. No god can hear you through a sept, through a prayer mandated by man. No god can see through the candle smoke. You do not humble yourselves before them, you do not make an offering. You do nothing, but listen to some so-called holy man tell you what you must do. I do not subscribe to lies. I believe in the truth. In the gods in the wind and the sky and the ground and the water. That’s what I believe. I believe in that which I can see and hear and feel.”
“Well,” he pauses, swallowing hard, fighting back against his father’s teachings that threaten to rear their head, have him lecturing you, making you believe. “I shall have enough faith for both of us in the Seven and you…can have enough for the two of us in your old gods.” And the toll that sentence, concession, takes on him is worth it to the smile on your face, to feel your arms as they wrap around him in a hug, his face pressed against your neck, your scent the only thing he can smell.
All he ever wants to smell.
Propriety be damned.
The Wedding:
The hall is full, you don’t even have to be inside it to know, you can hear the rustling of people inside of it, the sounds of whispers and murmurs and prayers as you stand, the gown on your frame heavy, far too heavy. This was what you never wanted. You wanted freedom and armour and swords and war. You wanted to fly on Cannibal’s back over the world, serving your sister, the Queen.
Instead, to ensure her throne, you must be wed. Become the Lady Hightower, rather than the Princess Targaryen you have been your entire life.
“My child,” your father calls out and you turn to him, your eyes heavy-lidded and tired, lined with tears, tears you will never let fall for it’s not strength to cry where people can witness weakness. “It is time.”
“Of course,” you whisper, your hands twining in the layers of your white and silver skirt, the one that matches the one your sister’s, save for the gold that was on hers. The General has the silver; the Queen has the gold. You lift the heavy folds into your hands, stepping towards him, unsure of how to step and move in a gown like this when most of your life has been comprised of armor.
You know that gowns are a different sort of armour, ones made for ladies, ones made to present them as proper while hiding a multitude of secrets, but they have never been your favoured kind. Nonetheless, you cross the room, taking your father’s arm, the black and red cloak around your shoulders, soon to be replaced with ones of green and gold—Hightower colours.
The doors to the hall open, revealing the crowd of people curious and watching, whispering about your legitimacy, whether you are Targaryen at all, but it is nothing new. What is new, is the boy of no more than twenty who stands at the top of the stairs, looking at you with awe in green eyes, a nervous hand running through dark brown curls that are overlong and falling into his eyes.
A sight that makes you smile.
In truth, you love Ormund and it is no burden to marry him. You could have married Gwayne or the Tyrel lad or the Martel prince. There were other options, other ways to ensure that your sister would be the first woman on the Iron Throne, one who would not bleed, but you grew fond of the boy who wrote you letters.
The boy who said he believed in you. Something no one else had ever said.
“You will be fine, my dear,” your father whispers as the two of you begin the walk along the red roll of carpet, the one with golden tasselled edges, opulence and Targaryen power in a simple display.
“I know, Father,” you reply, your attention focused on the boy ahead, the one who’s Adam’s apple bobs hard, his chest rising and falling in erratic ways. “I have seen the outcomes. I will be wonderful.” The feeling is strange when Viserys pulls the cloak from your shoulders, your arms bare for a moment, skin prickling with goosebumps, coldness seeping in through the loss of the house which has been yours since before you were born.
But the coldness recedes when Ormund steps forwards with the green and gold cloak of the Hightowers, placing it over your shoulders, his palms pressing down against them for a moment, his touch grounding and precious and everything you need to survive through the rite of the Faith that you do not believe in. You would rather kneel before a Weirwood tree, the skirt of your gown digging into the damp, cold earth, the white stained black with soil.
But you find that this is okay too, your hands finding Ormund’s as the Septon speaks, his voice arching loud and clear through the hall, Ormund’s green eyes locked upon you the entire time.
And when you are pronounced of one flesh, you find that the kiss he gives you is sweet and grounding and promising. As if the press of his lips against yours is a promise like his Faith says: a promise to love you forever.
To believe in you.
Ormund cannot take his eyes from you, his wife, clothed in white and silver wearing the cloak of green and gold, a Targaryen no longer. No, you are his wife. He wants to shout it from the rooftops, declare it to the entire world, but he refrains, contenting himself with dancing with you, his hand never leaving yours.
It is now, watching you spin in a swirl of skirts and cloaks that he remembers from that first day in the courtship, the walk around the gardens when you said that you believed in what you could see. In gods that could hear you.
“My love?” he says as he pulls you back in, his hand finding your waist, fitting to the curve as if it was always supposed to. “Is this marriage…real for you?”
“It is before the Seven,” you whisper, eyes looking just past him, at someone over his shoulder, as if you cannot lie to him if you look at him.
“How can I make it true to you?” Your eyes find his again, shocked and surprised, wide open, pupils flaring and contracting and flaring again as they trace every line of his face, his skin flushing beneath your gaze.
“Take me to a Weirwood tree,” you whisper, your cheek pressing against his, lips at his ear, breath coursing over the shell of it, causing goosebumps to pebble along his skin, blood to rush to places it really shouldn’t in a public place. “On our trip, take me to Weirwood tree and there we shall make it real.”
“So it is said,” he replies, his voice equally low and quiet at your ear, “so mote it be.” And he knows that he does not imagine, the tremor in your body, the shiver of your skin in his hands. You desire him as he desires you.
“You waved the bedding ceremony,” you remark, your hands coming to the clasp of the cloak, the golden leaf hooking around gold twines. “How will they know it’s true?”
“Blood,” Ormund says, his back to you, muscles stiffening, rippling beneath the fabric of his doublet, his breath hitching as his arms move, the overlayer of the doublet shrugged off and onto the floor.
“Ah, I see,” you whisper, crossing the room, your cloak left behind in a pool on the stone floor. You cross to him, your hand resting in the place between his shoulder blades, rubbing a small circle as you step around to look at him, at the vein pulsing in his jaw, the way the line is sharp, taut, his neck tight and rigid. “Do you not want to consummate? Are you not ready? For if you’re not, I shall cut my hand and it will be done.”
“NO!” he blurts out, the word too fast and too loud for the stillness of the chambers, his cheeks reddening as he looks down, down at his boot covered feet. “I just want it to be proper and I…” He swallows hard and you understand.
“You don’t know what to do,” you conclude and he nods, cheeks still red, ruddy as he looks at you, green eyes apologetic. Fearful. “Well luckily,” you whisper, stepping closer, watching as his Adam’s apple bobs with another hard, fearful, nervous swallow, “I do.”
“How?” he asks, the blush fading, his brows drawing together and eyes flaring with anger, with jealousy and possessiveness. Perhaps the most potent aphrodisiac. More potent than power for here is power in love, a man who truly wants you as his.
“My uncle is a…an interesting man,” you whisper, lips curving in a sardonic kind of smile, your free hand, the one not resting between his shoulder blades, finds his, interlacing your fingers with his. “And he…he took my sister to a brothel one night and I followed. Not to see or know, but rather…because my blades are quite sharp.”
“And?” Ormund whispers, his body pressing against yours, his body moving steps to you, to feel you against him even through the layers of fabric.
“And I saw what the act is,” you whisper, your gaze dropping from his eyes to his lips, his soft lips, the ones that you have felt against yours merely hours ago. The ones that made you feel what you supposed those people at the brothels did, except yours was made of love. “I know what to do.”
“Teach me,” he whispers, his forehead dipping, pressing against yours, his eyes closing as he breathes in your scent, the one he says is everything he’s dreamed about. “Teach me so that I may know—for you.”
“Very well,” you whisper, surging up, pressing your lips against his in a kiss that is hungry, that is full of love and desire. He gasps, eyes flying open, surprise glimmering in them before he melts against you, his hands finding your waist, your shifting to twine around his neck, lacing through the curly strands of his hair, his body pressing you back, back, back against the wall.
His mouth has opened, slanting, his tongue sliding into your mouth, sliding along yours in a way that leaves you breathless, his hands sliding from your waist, to your back up to the ties of your gown, the laces of the bodice. Your skin is fevered, flushing with want, a coil in your stomach from the press of his body against yours, the feeling of his lips and tongue and the way in desperation your teeth have clashed.
“Is this right?” he whispers, pulling back, pulling away as his fingers work the bodice ties loose, a line of saliva stretching between you and him. “Am I doing this right?”
“I mean,” you pause, swallowing hard yourself, skin flushing anew, burning, burning, burning at the way his eyes track the movement of your swallow, green eyes black with desire. “I feel something so I assume so.” The scent of his skin like that of sandalwood and papyrus is all you can smell and it is intoxicating, but not so intoxicating as the way his eyes widen when your dress loosens, when you shrug out of it, the gown pooling underneath you on the floor, a halo around your feet.
“My god,” he rasps and then he’s kissing you again, his hand fisting in your hair as he pulls you against him, enough that you can feel his bulge, the one not growing so much as already grown. It’s hard and stiff and his hips move against you of their own accord and you wonder how he knows to do this when he has never done so before.
“I thought,” you gasp out as he finds a spot underneath your ear, his teeth working at the skin, tongue soothing the bite, “you’d never done this before.”
“I haven’t,” he murmurs against your neck, “but with you, it seems I know.” He breathes in the crook of your neck, breathing in your scent, his nose pressing against your skin before he lifts his head, the bed now behind you, your knees pressing into it, threatening to buckle as he pushes against you. “What is next?”
“They, um, they,” you pause, breaking off, images flashing before your eyes, things that at the time you wished you hadn’t seen, but are useful now. Fingers at the place you never thought of as anything, hands and lips over chests, hips slamming against hips. “The men prepare the woman.”
“How?” he asks, pulling back, pulling away from you, mouth pinching as though even this small bit of separation pains him.
“Their fingers,” you whisper, sighing when he looks confused, brows knitting in a way that is adorable, yet far too clueless. You remove your smallclothes, letting them fall to the floor, a heady rush of lust and love in your veins when you see the way he’s looking at you, when you hear the deep sound that escapes him.
You fall back onto the bed, shifting, spreading your legs, your hand going to your cunt, finding your clit, placing pressure against it, a bolt of something running through you, a small sound escaping your lips involuntarily.
“Let me,” Ormund whispers, his clothes now shed, his cock erect, hard, a clear bead resting on the tip as he climbs over your body, replacing your hand with his, his thumb pressing down on your clit, a curious finger dipping between your folds, pressing inside of you, the stretch burning and strange but at the same time, perfection and you let out a small sound, one that has Ormund looking at you with absolute lust. “You like this?” he asks, clarifying as he moves his finger in and out, tracking every reaction you have, every twist of your face, the way you move against him.
“Yes,” you breathe out and his lips curve in a cocky kind of smile, another finger sliding inside of you, knuckles dragging along your walls, his thumb never ceasing.
“Not enough,” he whispers and before you can ask him what he means, he’s shifting, lifting your hips, his tongue pressing against you. He’s tasting you and his fingers are moving, his tongue building a rhythm with them around your clit, his chest moving, rising and falling as if he’s breathing in the way you smell. Delighting in it.
It’s not long before the coil in your stomach is snapping, that feeling of heat and pleasure surging through your veins as he rises, his body over yours, his chin and lips still glistening with your release.
“Divine,” he whispers, his eyes hungry in a way you’ve never really seen before. “What’s next?” You can’t help but laugh a little, kind of laugh made of surprise, his lips curving up at the sound, his lips peppering kisses all over your skin, making you laugh all the more.
“You know what’s next,” you say and he pulls back, a solemn look in his eyes as he nods.
“Yes,” he says, “and you must know before I do that I love you. I feel you should know it before we do something that can never be taken back. I know…” he pauses, even as his cock presses against you, kissing your entrance. “I know that I may not have been your choice.”
“You were my choice,” you tell him and he blinks, the look in his eyes like he is rewriting every thought he’s ever had. “I saw many options and my father did not suggest you. I did. I wanted you and I have you. I love you.” He presses his lips against yours, pressing inside of you, inching in and your gasp of pain is swallowed by his lips, a single tear sliding down his cheek as he pushes in, the burn echoing throughout your body.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers and you lift one hand from his back, wiping away the tear with the side of your finger, drawing him back to you in a kiss as he begins to move inside of you, building a rhythm, one punctuated by murmurs of love you. Love you. Love you.
And when his thrusts grow sloppy, you can feel his release nearing, yours drawing close again from the way he kisses you, his hands trailing over every inch of your body and the way his cock drags along your walls.
“Love—you,” he cries, just as your release comes through, that same feeling of pleasure, of heaviness in your limbs as he spills inside of you in thick hot ropes, his body collapsing beside yours, drawing you close to him, his eyes closing as he breathes you in. “I love you.”
“And I you,” you whisper, your hand tracing the side of his face as his eyes open, lips pulling back in a smirk as he looks at you.
“I shall never tire of hearing you say that,” he whispers. “Can you say it again?”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” you whisper and he sighs in contentment, pulling you down beside him, your gaze snagging on a bruise on his shoulder, one dark and deep and in the shape of a belt. “What is that? Who hurt you?”
“It’s nothing,” he whispers, a shadow falling over his face. “Just a reminder of the weight of blood. Something that…” he pauses, pulling the covers up and over the two of you, the ones which had been folded at the end of the bed, “I forget when I’m with you.”
And you say nothing more, simply pressing a kiss against the purpling bruise and holding him while sleep claims you both.
The Weirwood tree is tall and large and strong, wizened in a way that Ormund has never seen another tree be. It is a marker of the Old Gods, the Old Faith, something his father hates, something he should hate, his father’s message having been beaten into him a thousand times before, but standing here, his hand in yours, he finds he disagrees.
As he always does with you.
“What do we do, my love?” he asks you and you turn to him, a smile alight on your face as you pull him towards it, a small giggle escaping your lips, body clothed in a green and gold gown, beautiful and perfect and yet a part of him wishes you were wearing armour, clothes you loved above all else.
“We speak the truth,” you reply, kneeling down in the damp earth, not only the hem of your dress gathering dirt, but rather all of it. “We tell the tree how we love each other and then we say we take the other as our partner. It is that simple.” He kneels down with you, the scent of you and damp earth overwhelming him and he knows that for the rest of his life, when he thinks of his wedding it will be this: you in a dirt-stained gown and loose hair and the scent of dirt, your warm hands in his.
“Well then, I love you. I have since you dropped from the ceiling when you were five and I was seven and I will continue to do so forever.”
“I love you as well,” you tell him, your smile softening, becoming loving in a way it’s never been before. “I have loved you since you sent your first letter and said that you believed in me and addressed me as General Targaryen because no one had ever believed in me before. And I could not imagine losing you, my letter boy, to anyone.”
“What now?” he whispers, his heart seeming too large for his chest and he wants nothing more than to take you here and now—now that he understands everything to do.
“Now you say you take me for your wife,” you tell him and he squeezes your hand.
“I take you, Y/n Targaryen, as my wife.”
“And I take you, Ormund Hightower, as my husband,” you whisper and then he’s letting go of your hands, his fingers framing your face as he cups you, pulling you to him and pressing a searing kiss to your lips. One that leaves you both breathless because you know.
This is the moment that you became real.
The First Child:
Ormund waits, his hands twining together as Cannibal comes into view, his true name something only you know, a secret that you keep and that he does care that you do. He can practically hear his father’s mutterings, curses about you and your polluted blood and sinful nature, but he does care because he loves you.
He loves the things you’ve told him of your line, of your sister, of your mother. He has grown to love the things you love, his father’s messages be damned.
He watches as you leap from Cannibal’s back, landing in a roll, springing to your feet as Cannibal takes off for some distance place, someplace you can call him back from in some way that he does ask about. Your dragon is the only secret you keep and he does not care.
What he cares about is the wide smile on your face, the way your skin is glowing as you run to him, the scent of fire and ash clinging to your dark leather riding gear. He opens his arms and you run straight into them, your week away with your sister having taken a toll on him.
He spent the entire time pouring your oils on your pillow and holding it to him, wishing that it was you, even though he knew it wasn’t, the smell being off. Wrong.
“My love!” he cries as he picks you up, spinning around the courtyard of Oldtown. “How are you?”
“I’m pregnant,” you blurt out as he sets you down, everything inside of him freezing in place.
“You’re what?” he breathes and watches as your smile widens, deepens, tears lining your perfect eyes. Eyes that are glimmering with a strange sort of happiness.
“I’m pregnant,” you whisper and he’s dropping to his knees before you, the dirt of the courtyard digging into his clothed knees, one hand on your hip, the other on your stomach as he looks at it. He expects to see the child moving inside of you already but it’s early, he knows. He just can’t believe it.
An heir, already.
“My miracle,” he whispers, looking up at you, tears gathering in his green eyes. “My forever miracle.” And he rises, pressing a deep kiss against your lips as he pulls you against him, every line of your body against every line of his and there is the thing he missed, the things your oils lack. The mystery ingredient: you. Just you.
You and another.
“What do you think of the name Aemon?” Ormund says, stepping into the room, his attention on you, but his eyes still scanning the book of names he found in the library.
“No,” you whisper and he looks up at you, you who stands tall, belly round and protruding, five moons in now, the child kicking hard against you, wanting out, wanting to breathe air. “I want to name him Baelon—or, if it’s a girl, Baela.”
“Why?” he whispers, taking note of the tears that line your eyes, tears that fall more easily now since the baby.
“My brother,” you whisper, voice thick as a single, glittering tear rolls down your cheek. “My brother was named Baelon.”
“Very well,” Ormund says, dropping the book onto the bed, crossing to you, stepping behind you, interlacing his fingers beneath your bump and lifting, reliving you of the pressure for a moment. “Baelon it is.”
Ormund hears your scream echoing off the stone walls of Oldtown, ricochetting to him in his solar, the new solar for the new Lord of Oldtown, his father now nothing but ash. It is a deep scream, a primal scream and he runs, leaving everything behind, every instinct in his body simply to get to you, pushing past servants and guards and anyone who gets in his way, bursting into the room just as you scream again, your hand on your stomach and a pool underneath you on the stone.
“MIDWIFE!” Ormund roars, his voice a matching primal sound for yours. “NOW!” The midwife runs in, followed by the Maester and they try to remove Ormund from the room, but he fights against them, fighting to stay with you, your hand reaching for him and his reaching for you and they soon give up on trying to separate you.
For there is something no one knows, save you and he: you are of one heart, one body, one mind.
By whatever God’s decree.
Twenty hours of labour, of your screams and cries, of your hand squeezing his and cursing him in the same breath that you confess how much you love him. Twenty hours for a silent child.
“My lord,” the midwife says, the child in her arms silent and still. “He is not breathing.”
“GIVE HIM TO ME!” you cry and she startles, body seizing for a moment but Ormund nods and she hands the green and gold bundle to you, one which you push back from the stillborn face. “Listen to me Baelon,” you whisper, “you will live. Even if I have to fight every god in the world, you will live. You will breathe and cry and scream because I am your mother and I am telling you to live.”
He reaches for you, wanting to look you in the eyes and tell you that the child is gone, but it’s that moment that a sharp and keening cry breaks through the air, the baby screaming in your arms, face ruddy in only the way that a baby can be. And it opens its eyes to show startling green.
“Welcome Baelon,” he whispers. “You are a miracle, just like your mother.”
It was after the labour, as you were penning your letter to your sister that a raven landed on the sill with a message. One that you opened, passing yours onto the bird, instructing it to take the message to Princess Rhaenyra. The message was written in your sister’s scrawling hand, a mere few words. Just: Jacerys Velaryon and his date of birth.
Exactly two days before Baelon.
It must be a twin thing.
The Children:
Five children, a miracle for the Hightower line, every single one carrying some piece of Valyria and Oldtown. Five children, four sons and one daughter. Baelon as the oldest, the heir to the Oldtown legacy, Aerys, the youngest, the most reckless. Rhaegar, the third born and the most studious, fascinated by the Andal faith. Matarys, the fourth born, the warrior. The most like you.
And Daenerys, the youngest, the only daughter. The one with red hair and green eyes, every inch the Hightower girl, but a mind of a Targaryen, steel and fire and swords. Spoiled beyond belief, but tough beyond all measure.
And now, a ward, a son of Alicent, your brother. Little more than a babe, one that you will raise. Young Daeron.
It seemed that your life was full, yet a dreamer always knows that the worst battle is around the corner and you knew that nothing would be solved before the green banners flew black.
The Dance of the Dragons:
“What?” you whisper, your throat thickening at the words still ringing through the hall, your father is dead, Aegon is king. “That is not his right!”
“Rhaenyra is not fit,” Ormund says, the letter sealed with the Red Keep seal in his hand, the folded parchment flapping in the movements of his hand. “Daemon is a threat.”
“Daemon is an idiot in love! And it is not his right! You cannot support this!” you cry, but Ormund’s face draws closed, shuttering as he sets his jaw.
“I am a Hightower and I support Aegon as king. His bloodline is partly pure. And you are a Hightower by marriage. You follow what I say.”
“Don’t forget yourself, Ormund,” you hiss, stepping closer to him, your finger jabbing into his chest. “I am not a simple-minded fool and if this comes to war as I know it will, you do not want to be on my bad side.”
“We have been married for seventeen years and yet you doubt me?” he whispers, his voice low, the door of his solar creaking open, a presence behind the two of you and you can feel your heartbeat in your throat, can hear your blood pulsing in your head.
“If you are not with me,” you hiss, “you are against me.” You turn and walk away, your chest feeling like it’s caving in, the warning from your father all those years ago ringing through you, the fact that Hightowers hate Targaryens.
You wonder, if perhaps, your love for the letter boy clouded the truth of the war you saw. If you made a wrong choice that will cost your sister her throne.
“Mother,” Baelon hisses from the shadows of the halls, stepping out, Aerys not far behind him. “We must leave. Our loyalty is to Aunt Rhae, not Alicent. Not Aegon. We cannot stay. We have to leave. Fight.”
“I can’t,” you whisper and the tears that you have been feeling since your father died, since you heard the throne was stolen, boil over, spilling down your cheeks as your body shakes, your eldest son, a man grown, enfolding you in his arms. The arms which did not move until you ordered them too. Your miracle child.
“Why not?” he whispers and you cry harder, the sobs wracking your body.
“Because I love him.”
“We fly the banner of Aegon,” you hear Ormund say, his voice loud and dominating in the small space. “We support a righteous king.” You gasp, your chest aching, your hand pressing against your sternum, green gown never heavier than now.
“Mother,” Matarys whispers behind you and you turn, seeing your youngest son, his violet eyes gleaming with their own tears, his mind haunted by dreams. A dragon dreamer or possibly a battle seer, you are not yet sure. But his mind is haunted with fire and smoke and a shadow with jaws of steel.
“Yes, my darling?” you say, your voice cracking with the weight of tears.
“We need to leave,” he says and the pain rams through you again with all the force of a battering ram and you shake your head, pressing your lips together as you hold your arms out for your small son to run to.
“Not yet,” you whisper.
“Why not?”
“Because I love him.”
“The dragons are ready whenever you are, Mother,” Rhaegar says, his body leaning against the stone wall of your solar, your sons all gathered before you. You’re sharpening your sword, the one given to you by Daemon when you took Baelon to retrieve his egg as a child.
“I cannot leave,” you tell them. “I love him too much and when you all fall in love, you will understand.”
“But you swore to Aunt Rhae,” Baelon cries and you shrug, tears slipping down your cheeks, an admission of weakness because Ormund has always, will always, be yours.
“What will it take for you to leave, Mother?” Rhaegar asks, logical to a fault, scholarly like Ormund.
“If he threatens us, you and me. Then I will leave. If I do not kill him first.”
You can hear murmurs behind the closed doors of Ormund’s solar and you push the doors open, to see Ormund seated beside Daeron, whispering about power and righteousness and the taint of Targaryen blood. Of their sin.
“Sins?” you call out and he looks up, startled, shame flooding his green eyes. Eyes that used to look at you with love, but have since become as dark and convoluted as his father’s. “You are despicable, Ormund!”
“Why? Because I speak the truth?!”
“BECAUSE YOU ARE BECOMING YOUR FATHER!” you scream, the sound bouncing off the stone walls, Daeron’s face drawing tight, fear and curiosity warring in them. “Daeron,” you say, tone softer, his face relaxing when he looks at you, the only mother he has ever known, “go.”
He does, running from the room and closing the doors behind him with a echoing bang.
“I am not my father,” Ormund says, stepping around the table, towards you but you shake your head, lip curling as you step away from his touch.
“You are crazed, half-mad. Claiming my blood, the blood in your children is sinful. You are becoming exactly as he taught you to be and I swear if you lift a hand to my children, I will make you regret it. Do not do it.” And then you sweep from the room, the tears burned away now by anger and rage and an understanding that soon you will leave.
That soon he’ll finally do something that means you must flee.
It comes at dinner that night.
“All Targaryens,” Ormund mutters, his knife stabbing against his plate with particular force, “ save for young Daeron, should burn by their own dragon fire.” It’s like someone has stabbed you, pain spreading from your chest through your body and you can feel your lips open, a horrid sound echoing through the room as you push your chair back from the table, limbs weak and heavy, Ormund’s head lifting with urgency, gaze clearing as he looks at you, body already moving towards you.
And that’s what’s cruel, because for a second it looked like he was your Ormund. The boy you fell in love with and the man who set you free.
But soon the shutter falls and the monster is in its place.
“Mother, are you alright?” Baelon calls out and you close your eyes for a moment, drawing strength from the blackness of your closed eyes, the darkness, nodding once, teeth grinding against themselves.
“I will be,” you whisper, “later, most likely by tonight.” You don’t even need to see your children to know that they understand.
Tonight is the night that you’ve finally snapped.
Tonight is the night you leave.
“You know,” Ormund says, his hands undoing the laces of your gown, a ritual of undressing one another that you began in the early days of marriage, “this war will have costs.”
“And let me guess,” you reply, tone arch and blood boiling at his touch, at his proximity, the kind of hate and anger that can only be borne of love, “you will pay them all.”
“No,” he says, his answer surprising you, your breath hitching. “I will not pay the price if it is you. You are the only thing I cannot lose. You keep me sane for only am I complete with you. You are the price I will not pay.”
Your chest feels hollow, scraped clean, his words running through you as you turn, your gown falling from your body as you pull him to you, pressing a kiss against him, one deep and searing, the two of you merely a tangle of tongues and teeth and limbs as you stumble to the bed. As you say goodbye even if he doesn’t know it yet.
And when he’s asleep, you rise from the bed, grabbing your sword, dressing in riding clothes as quietly as possible before slipping from the room, running to your children, banging on their doors, their bodies emerging, ready as you are.
“Mother,” Daenarys says when she emerges, “should we leave a note?”
“No,” you tell her. “Your father lost that courtesy when he said we should all burn. Now, let’s go.” And the six of you slip from the castle soundlessly, crossing the courtyard to the edge where you call out into the night, in a language that is not human, that merely sounds like chuffs and chirps.
The language of the dragons, the language Leviathan (Cannibal’s real name) taught you when you were a child.
The language he promised you that he would hear no matter how far away he was. And he does not let you down, his large form rising above the five other creatures behind him.
The language that is the reason you are able to flee with your children, flying to Dragonstone, to battle, to Iron Thrones and Iron Crowns and your sister.
To the battle you saw all those years ago.
—
Ormund wakes to an empty bed, your side cold as if it was never slept in at all, only the faintest edge of your scent clinging to the cloth. He rises, dressing, calling for you, yelling your name through the halls, running to every place you go, the hill, the yard, the library, armoury. Everywhere.
And you are nowhere.
“WHERE IS SHE?! WHERE IS MY WIFE?!” he cries once he’s gathered all the servants in the grand hall, a single soldier stepping forwards, eyes cast to the floor.
“She and your children were reported to have left last night,” he says. “On dragonback. Cannibal led the charge with her on him.”
Ormund can feel the last bit of his sanity disappear, everything shuddering into place as his father’s son.
“She is a traitor then,” he says but it is not him, not really, for the real Ormund is locked away, war making monsters out of men.
But the real Ormund whispers that he will get you back, no matter the cost because you were the only thing he never wanted to pay.
“If you see her,” he says, “kill her.”
—
“You did not leave quickly,” Rhaenyra says, your hand twined with hers as the two of you stand on the balcony of her rooms in Dragonstone, her crown heavy on her brow and your new title as her Hand and General of the armies, Protector of the Land, heavy on yours.
“No,” you whisper, looking out at the dusky, smoke-filled sky.
“I had rather hoped you’d never leave at all,” she says and you turn to her, taking in the aged look on her face, the face that you know so well, have known and will always know better than anyone else in all the Seven Kingdoms.
“That hurts,” you say, your tone teasing and she laughs, just a bit, a small laugh, short and sharp and nostalgic all the same.
“I had hoped that love would be too strong,” she says, her lips pressing into a saddened, heavy smile. “I had hoped Ormund would be different.” “You are not the only one.”
—
“Lucerys should not go,” you whisper. “I see a shadow that takes him. It’s too dangerous.”
“We need this diplomatic mission,” Rhae says and you reach for her hand, lifting it and pressing it against your heart, your head shaking.
“We might lose him.”
“So, send me,” Matarys calls and you startle, looking back at him, your brows knitting and breaths changing, deeper and yet shorter, fear choking you.
“What? You said you see a shadow before you die,” you say and he stands, rising from his seat at the Black Council table, his body spindly and thin like a strong wind would blow him over.
“Let us change fate.” Rhae looks at you for a moment before shaking her head and nodding, assenting to the mission.
“Very well.”
—
You should never have let the mission go on. You should have gone with them, instead here you stand, looking at the two boys dead.
“The boys who clung to us, who hid their faces in our skirts,” Rhae whispers, her body pressing against you, hip to your hip, arm around you, the two of you holding each other up, “dead, all so I may sit upon a throne of swords?”
“War has costs,” you whisper, your tears having long since dried away, evaporated by rage. “And I shall pay them just to have Aemond’s head on my wall. Oh my boy!”
—
“Sir,” the messenger cries, stepping into the room. “News of the Targaryens.”
“Say it and then leave,” he orders, jaw already gritting, a pit of fear that he refuses to acknowledge growing as he fears that he will hear that you are dead. That you are gone.
“Matarys and Lucerys have been killed by Aemond on a mission.” Ormund can feel that chokehold of anger, that familiar pain as he lifts his glass of spirits and hurls it at the wall, the glass shattering in a million shards.
“Get out.” And when he is alone, Ormund lets the tears of sanity slip down his cheeks as he thinks of the small boy who used to swing from his arms lying dead on a funeral pyre, set alight by dragon fire.
He cannot bear it.
He would rather death claim him now.
—
“Before the battle, before I leave,” you hiss to Rhaenyra, drawing her aside, “I need you to listen in case when you take the throne, I am not there. Alright?”
“Alright,” she says, her tone cautious, hesitant.
“Wear full body armour before you sit upon the throne and put cloth in case the moon curse comes. Make sure no blood will be seen upon your body. Promise me or else all will have been in vain and our sons will have died for nothing.”
“I promise,” she vows and you nod, turning from her and leaving the hall, closing your eyes for a moment as the wind whips into your face, cold and cruel and cutting.
You will not come back from this battle.
Of that you are sure.
The Battle of the Gullet:
“Foolish girl,” you hiss at the sight of Rhaena atop Sheepstealer, the dragon out of control, not bonded in a true way to her. “To Jace,” you chuff at Leviathan and he huffs, the sound not a word, but a snort of indignation as he roars, the sound splitting the sky, Sheepstealer turning, veering, leaving Vermax in its path.
But then Sheepstealer’s tail swings, hitting Vermax and it’s the sight you saw in your dreams, the arrow soon to come. You squeeze your legs around the seat of Leviathan’s body and he dives, flying forwards, enough that as you hear the arrow launch, you are able to jump, leaping from Leviathan’s body, the arrow cutting through your armour, three others following in quick succession, ripping through your body.
“Y/N! NO!” Jace cries as your body falls, plummets, blood trailing from the wounds, your body landing atop the seat of Leviathan, but you cannot feel it. You cannot even feel what once was searing pain from the arrows cut.
Rather you feel nothing.
You feel empty, your blood trickling from you, falling onto Leviathan’s body, his words angry and worried and harsh.
“You want to talk about foolish girl, little human? That’s you! You are my human and you are not allowed to die!” His roar is the last thing you hear before everything goes black, an image of green eyes surging up to meet you as you feel the gods reach down for you.
You fought off death all those years ago for Baelon and now it has come to collect.
You knew you would not come back.
Daenarys’s letter:
Dear Father,
I know you may not even read this, may see my name and think betrayer but you should know that it is you who betrayed us long before we left.
You betrayed us every time you spoke against Targaryens for that is what we are. Hightower blood may run through my veins, through my brothers’ veins, but not our mother’s. Not your wife’s. You said all should burn and you forgot that that was her.
You said that your own wife should burn.
And you should know that we had pressured her to leave from the moment the war broke, but her response was always “I cannot because I love him.” Her limit was you threatening her and us. And you hit it. So, we left.
But do not let your hurt let her die without you saying goodbye. She took four arrows for Jace at the Battle of the Gullet. She’s dying, Father. They do not think she’ll make it. Please come.
Please say goodbye because I know you love her as she loves you. It is the only thing I’m sure of, Father.
Please.
Your loving daughter,
Daenarys Hightower
—
“My army,” Ormund calls, his heartbeat frantic, mind erratic. He wishes he had a dragon so that he could fly to you in no time at all and never have to worry about being too late, “we are to march to King’s Landing.”
“To kill the Queen?” one asks and he shakes his head.
“No,” he answers. “To serve her. Fly our banners black. Now let us go.”
The Reunion:
“Let me up!” you cry, the bandages tight around your body as you shift from side-to-side, trying to rise but finding that it hurts, giant ripping pain. “Come on, Daemon. Help me up.”
“And let you die?” he asks, violet eyes narrowed on you, lips curved up in a soft smirk. “I think not, young General.” His arm is around Rhaenyra’s fingers and you lift your arms into a prayer clasp, shaking them at her.
“Please, sweet sister,” you cry and she laughs, a choked kind of laugh, tears falling from her eyes as she shakes her head.
“I cannot lose you. The Maesters are hopeful your bleeding is done, but they’re not confident.” You sigh and let your hands flop back to the bed, the motion jarring and you grunt, teeth gritting, eyes falling on Jace and Baelon, standing side-by-side, future King and Hand together.
“Jace, you owe me your life,” you sing-song, but he shakes his head.
“No can do,” he says, and Baelon glares at you, green eyes lined with tears, anger in those eyes that are a mimic of Ormund’s.
“I wish Matarys were here,” calls a soft voice, that of Rhaegar, but the mention of your youngest son, the one with violet eyes and dark curls causing a pain to rip through you, choked sobs leaving your lips, the kind that have your body heaving, aching, tearing.
Rhae crosses the floor, sinking down upon the bed beside you and drawing you to her as you did when you were little, your tears falling fast as you mourn the child that you had. That Aemond killed. For no reason but a throne.
One your sister sat on without bleeding, despite the period blood she found after. She listened and now she shall be Queen for years.
“I want my son,” you cry and Rhae’s arms tighten around you.
“I miss him too,” calls a voice that has your heart racing, your head turning, tears falling faster, sobs racking your body. Ormund.
“Here to kill us all?” Daemon sneers, drawing forth his sword, placing the blade against the hollow of Ormund’s throat, a bead of blood on the edge of the sword.
“No,” he answers, his hand waving at his simple, black garb, not a single weapon in sight. “I am here for my love.” He looks at you with green eyes clear, sane, not a hint of the broken man forged by his father’s hand.
“You’re here, truly,” you whisper and he nods, stepping around Daemon’s blade to go to you, falling onto his knees before the bed in a repentant pose, taking your hand and pressing it against his lips.
“I told you before,” he whispers, “that war may have many costs, but you are the only cost I would not pay.”
“Where are your men?” Rhae asks and he lifts his head from the bed, from your hand, his green eyes meeting her violet ones.
“Here, flying the black banner,” he says. “My armies are hers. I am whatever side she claims in war. Because I will not pay the price of losing her.”
“You mean it?” you ask and he looks at you, reaching his hand forwards to cup your cheek as he nods.
“You are and have always been, their general.”
The End:
The war concluded with Queen Rhaenyra succeeding, her brother Aemond killed by her sister, Y/N. Aegon, Alicent and Helena also perished, war having shown that Side Black was the winner.
Vhaegor, the unbonded dragon, made a new choice—Ormund Hightower, the husband who rode with his wife when she went to slay her brother on the back of Leviathan, the mythical Cannibal.
Ormund gave up his seat at Oldtown to his second son Aerys and had two more children by his wife Y/N: Lucerys, the son and Matarya, the daughter.
Rhaenyra was succeeded by her son, Jacerys whose Hand was his cousin Baelon. And history has learned.
And history continues.
The Dance concluded as Y/N foresaw when the banners flew black.
they would have made the best princes 🥺🫅
creds: pinterest
