#rhaegar

[prophicc]

‘ “He has a song,” [Rhaegar] replied. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”

‘He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany’s, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door.’

- A Clash of Kings (George R. R. Martin)

[forlya]

Lyanna stark

Commission down by hayrj

[novembermorgon]

rhaegar dany aerys

[karuselii]

Last thought before the last breath

[teamhelaena]

Septa Sister

Rhaegar Targaryen x Sister Reader

Requested!

TW: 18+ Targcest, non con, dub con, murder, little bit somno, forced intimacy

The man who called himself your brother had a way of watching you that made your skin prickle when you weren't looking. Rhaegar moved through the world like water...effortless, inevitable, but his gaze always circled back to you with the weight of a tide pulling sand from shore. You'd catch it sometimes, the way his fingers would pause on the harp strings when you laughed, or how his eyes lingered half a breath too long after handing you a cup of wine. Normal things, between siblings. Almost.

The realization had crept up on him like dawn, slow, inevitable, illuminating things best left in shadow. Rhaegar couldn't pinpoint the moment you'd ceased being just his sister in his mind. Perhaps it was the summer you turned ten and three, when you'd outgrown your childhood clumsiness and moved through the Red Keep's halls with a new, unconscious grace. Or the first time you'd debated him over some obscure point of history, your eyes alight with a wit that matched his own. He'd laughed, delighted, and later that night stared at the canopy of his bed with a restless heat beneath his ribs that had nothing to do with the Dornish wine.

The harp strings snapped under Rhaegar's fingers with a discordant twang, the third time this fortnight. He stared at the broken wire coiling like a silver serpent on the floor, and for a dizzying moment imagined it wrapping around your ankle as you walked past. That particular madness had started last winter, when he'd noticed the way your slippered feet barely made sound on the marble, how your hips swayed just enough to make the Myrish lace of your skirts whisper secrets against your thighs.

The scrolls in the library smelled of crushed lavender and time, but Rhaegar barely noticed with his quill hovered over the parchment, ink dripping unnoticed as he watched you trace a fingertip along some ancient Valyrian text. You were mouthing the words silently, that little furrow between your brows he'd come to recognize as your 'thinking face.' Gods, even the way you frowned at faded glyphs made his chest tighten. When had that started? He couldn't recall the last time he'd thought of you as just his sister. Somewhere between your first blood and your first diplomatic negotiation, between braiding your hair as a child and now catching himself imagining what it might feel like unspooled across his pillow, something had shifted irrevocably.

The first time Rhaegar truly noticed...truly saw...was when you spilled pomegranate juice down the front of your gown at the feast celebrating Viserys' eighth name day. You'd laughed, loud and unguarded, crimson droplets flecking your chin like rubies as you licked your fingers clean. That laugh of yours had always been his undoing, but watching your tongue dart out to catch the sticky sweetness, watching the way your throat moved when you swallowed had left him gripping his goblet so tight the silver groaned. Later, in the privacy of his chambers, he'd pressed his forehead against the cold stone wall and tried to banish the image of your lips-stained red.

The morning light through the stained-glass windows of the Red Keep's sept painted your shoulders in fractured hues of blue and gold as you knelt before the altar. Rhaegar stood in the shadowed archway, fingers curling into his palms. He'd told himself he came to pray, but his gaze traced the curve of your neck where loose strands of hair escaped your braid. You shifted, the silk of your gown whispering against stone, and he caught the scent of lemon blossoms from your bath, something light and innocent that made his teeth ache.

The silence of the sept pressed against Rhaegar's eardrums like a physical thing, broken only by the faint rustle of your skirts as you adjusted your kneeling position. He watched the way your fingers...always so precise when handling scrolls or tuning a lute, fumbled slightly with the prayer beads. A loose strand of hair clung to the dampness at your temple, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from stepping forward to tuck it behind your ear.

The prayer beads slipped from your fingers with a clatter that echoed sharply through the sept. You bent to retrieve them, but Rhaegar was already there...his hand closing over yours before you could react, his palm warm and slightly calloused from harp strings. You froze. The air between you thickened with something unspoken, his thumb brushing the inside of your wrist where your pulse fluttered like a trapped bird.

He didn't speak, just flexed the hand that had held yours before smiling and taking a shaky breath while nodding. The gesture was so small you might have missed it, the way his fingers twitched against empty air as if still feeling the ghost of your pulse. You watched his throat work as he swallowed, the bob of his Adam's apple catching the fractured light from the stained glass above. When he finally stepped back, the space between you felt charged, like the moment before a summer storm breaks.

The scent of beeswax candles clung stubbornly to the air as you rose from the altar, your knees imprinting the faintest marks on the velvet kneeler. Rhaegar lingered by the archway, his silhouette haloed in dusty sunlight, too still, like a portrait painted just slightly wrong. You pretended not to notice how his fingers worried at the fraying edge of his sleeve, the way nobles did when they had something to say but knew they shouldn't.

"I should head back to the keep, mother misses me when I'm gone long" you smiled again and rose from kneeling, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from your skirts. The movement sent a whisper of silk against stone, too loud in the sept's hollow silence. Rhaegar's shadow stretched toward you across the patterned floor tiles, elongated by the late morning light, nearly touching the hem of your gown before you stepped aside.

The hem of your gown caught on the uneven tile as you turned, just enough to make you stumble, and Rhaegar was there again, his hand at your elbow before you could right yourself. His grip was firmer this time, fingers pressing into the soft skin beneath your sleeve with a possessiveness that made your breath hitch. Neither of you moved for a heartbeat too long, his thumb tracing idle circles through the thin fabric until you cleared your throat pointedly.

"Be…be careful, sweet sister." Rhaegar's voice was barely above a whisper, his breath warm against the shell of your ear as he steadied you. His words hitched in a way you'd never heard before, not the smooth cadence of a prince reciting poetry, but something raw and fractured. The hand on your elbow trembled slightly, his fingers flexing as if fighting the urge to pull you closer even as he forced himself to let go.

The corridor smelled of beeswax and torch smoke, but all Rhaegar could breathe was you, the ghost of lemon blossoms clinging to his borrowed cloak, the memory of your pulse fluttering beneath his fingers like a hummingbird's wings. He walked the winding stairs of Maegor's Holdfast in a daze, the stone walls warping around him as if the very castle had drunk too much Dornish red. Every step carried the echo of your prayer beads clattering against marble, the sound looping in his skull like a maddening chant.

Elia appeared at the turn of the stairwell like a mirage, little Rhaenys drowsing in her arms with a thumb tucked between lips. Rhaegar blinked at them…his wife, his daughter, as if surfacing from deep water. For one disorienting moment, Elia's dark eyes became yours, the curve of Rhaenys' cheek your own at seven summers. The illusion shattered when Elia smiled, but the wrongness of it lodged in his throat like a fishbone.

"Take her" he heard himself say to a passing maid, the command rougher than intended. Rhaenys whimpered as she was lifted away, dark curls mussed from sleep. Elia opened her mouth—to protest, to question—but Rhaegar already had her pinned against the tapestry-lined wall, his mouth hot and claiming against hers. The embroidered dragons scratched at his knuckles where they gripped the fabric beside her head.

Elia gasped into the kiss, her hands fluttering momentarily before settling on his shoulders. She tasted of mint tea and the candied almonds she favored after supper, pleasant, familiar, wrong. Rhaegar pressed closer anyway, chasing the phantom sensation of your wrist beneath his fingers by digging his own into Elia's hips hard enough to bruise. When she moaned, he imagined it was your voice catching in the sept's hush.

The chamber door groaned shut behind them with the weight of secrets poorly kept. Rhaegar didn't remember the path they'd taken, only the press of Elia's body against tapestries and stone corners, the way her skirts had pooled around their ankles like spilled ink when he'd lifted her against the wall. Now, in the dim light of a guest chamber seldom used, she smelled of rosewater and the faint musk of nursemaid's milk...wrong, all wrong. He buried his face in the crook of her neck anyway, inhaling deeply as if he could rewrite her scent through sheer force of will.

"You should try lemon blossoms" he murmured against her pulse point, lips grazing skin still damp from her morning bath. His fingers worked clumsily at the laces of her bodice, not the practiced movements of a husband of years, but the frantic haste of a man trying to outrun his own thoughts. "Or perhaps… bergamot. The Myrish soap the laundresses use for my sister's—" He caught himself too late, teeth sinking into his lower lip as Elia went very still beneath him.

Elia's breath hitched, not with pleasure, but with the sharp intake of realization. She went rigid beneath him, her dark eyes widening as they searched his face. "Rhaegar..." she whispered, and the way she said his name carried the weight of a thousand unspoken horrors.

Elia's hands, which had been clutching at his shoulders, now pressed flat against his chest, fingers splayed like a ward against evil. Rhaegar didn't move, didn't breathe, his pulse hammering where her palms met the silk of his doublet. The Solar's drapes fluttered in a sudden draft, sending dust motes swirling through the slanted sunlight between them, little flecks of gold that caught in Elia's lashes when she blinked.

Rhaegar groaned, not wanting to have a conversation when the ghost of your touch still burned against his palms, when the memory of your pulse beneath his fingers lingered like a brand. His hands moved instead, gripping Elia's waist with bruising urgency as he turned her onto her stomach, pressing her face into the embroidered pillows, the silver thread dragons crushed beneath her cheek. She gasped, half protest, half confusion, but he didn't pause, couldn't bear to meet her eyes when yours haunted the darkness behind his lids.

The chamber smelled of rose oil and sex, thick and cloying, but Rhaegar breathed in deep as if he could catch the fading remnants of lemon blossoms from the sept. He fisted a hand in Elia's dark curls, too coarse, too heavy as his hand started pulling just enough to arch her back, to expose the delicate knobs of her spine where your own would dip beneath silk. When his fingers trailed down, he imagined the ridges were yours, the tremble of her skin beneath his touch an echo of your shudder in the sept's filtered light.

Elia whimpered into the sheets, fingers clutching at the coverlet. The sound was wrong...too high, too soft...not your breathy laugh that haunted his dreams. Rhaegar bit his own tongue until he tasted copper, hips moving with a rhythm that wasn't for her, his eyes screwed shut as he chased the phantom of your warmth beneath him. He could almost see it, your hair spilling across the pillows like liquid moonlight, the way your thighs would tense as he—

"Rhaegar" Elia gasped, twisting beneath him, her voice sharp with something beyond pleasure. "You're hurting me."

"Sorry..." Rhaegar murmured against the damp skin of Elia's shoulder, but his hips didn't still, only gentled their pace as his fingers loosened their death grip on her waist. He pressed apologetic kisses along her spine, each one featherlight, perfunctory...but his mind was elsewhere, lost in the phantom sensation of your pulse fluttering beneath his thumb in the sept. When Elia arched into him with a shuddering sigh, it wasn't her name that tumbled from his lips but yours, raw and unbidden, the syllables cracking like overstrained harp strings.

Elia froze beneath him. Rhaegar didn't notice, too lost in the fantasy of your body yielding beneath his, the way your breath might hitch if he traced the shell of your ear with his tongue just so. It wasn't until she twisted violently away, sheets tangling around her thighs, that he blinked back to reality, to the wrongness of the wrong woman in his arms, the wrong scent clinging to his skin.

"What—what's wrong?" Rhaegar groaned, frustration roughening his voice as his fingers closed around Elia's ankle, dragging her back toward him with a force that sent her bare knees scraping across the silk sheets. His grip was too tight, he knew it even as he did it, could feel the delicate bones shifting beneath her skin like harp strings wound too taut.

Elia twisted like a caught fish, her dark eyes wide and wet with something that wasn't arousal. "You called me her name" she hissed, the words sharp as Valyrian steel between her teeth. The accusation hung in the air like smoke after wildfire, acrid and undeniable.

Rhaegar blinked as if surfacing from deep water, Elia's words striking him like a splash of cold sea spray. The realization that he'd spoken your name aloud, that it had slipped past his lips raw and unbidden, sent a shudder through him. But the hunger curling low in his gut left no room for guilt. He exhaled sharply through his nose and tugged Elia's leg again, dragging her back across the rumpled sheets with deliberate roughness.

"So?" His voice came out hoarse, roughened by the hours of stifled longing. The late afternoon light painted stripes across Elia's bare back where she resisted him, her muscles taut as bowstrings. "It's you I'm fucking, isn't it?" The words tasted bitter, but he couldn't stop them any more than he could halt the tide. He scoffed, aware of his own harshness yet powerless against the storm of frustration howling in his chest.

Elia went utterly still. Not the yielding softness of surrender, but the terrible stillness of a creature realizing the depth of its miscalculation. When she turned her head, the movement was slow and deliberate, her dark eyes reflecting the dying light like polished onyx. "You're not fucking me, Rhaegar" she whispered. The quiet precision of her words cut deeper than any scream. "You're trying to fuck her through me."

"Maybe" he mumbled before settling over her again, his breath hot against the nape of her neck. His fingers dug into her hips, not gently, not like a lover's touch, but with the desperation of a drowning man clutching driftwood. "Is it not better than adultery?" The words tasted like ash in his mouth, but he pressed them into her skin anyway, as if he could brand his own sins onto her flesh.

The words hung between them like smoke from a dying candle...thin, acrid, impossible to grasp. Elia's breath hitched, her fingers digging into the silk sheets as Rhaegar pressed closer, his body a furnace against her back. She could feel the lie in his touch, the way his hands mapped her curves but yearned for another's angles.

The laundresses whispered about it first, how the prince's chambers now smelled of lemon blossoms and bergamot, how the Dornish princess's linens were suddenly washed with the same Myrish soaps as yours. Rhaegar had stopped pretending, stopped hiding. You'd hear it sometimes, drifting through the stone corridors late at night, your name, raw and ragged, tangled with Elia's soft cries. The sounds would slither under your chamber door like smoke, curling around your ankles as you tried to sleep, making your skin prickle with something between shame and…something else you refused to name.

The sounds sometimes scared you...not with the sharp terror of a blade at your throat, but with the slow, creeping dread of watching ink bleed through parchment. Your name, always your name, torn from Rhaegar's lips in those hushed, shuddering moments behind closed doors. It slithered beneath the heavy oak of his chamber door like something alive, curling around your ankles as you hurried past, making the silk of your stockings cling damply to your skin. You'd press your palms over your ears, but the muffled moans always found the cracks between your fingers.

The worst nights were when Elia cried out, a high, breathy sound that seemed to catch in her throat halfway through. You'd freeze in the torchlit corridor, your own breath hitching as Rhaegar's answering groan rumbled through the stone. He never sounded like that when reciting poetry in the gardens or debating tactics in the Small Council chambers. This was a voice stripped raw, syllables fractured by something hungry and unnamable. Your slippered feet would carry you away faster then, the Myrish lace of your skirts whispering frantic secrets against your thighs.

You noticed it first in the small things, how his fingertips lingered an extra heartbeat when passing you a goblet at feasts, the way his thumb would brush your knuckles when helping you rise from your chair. Once, these gestures had been innocent, brotherly. Now they made your stomach tighten with a strange, prickling awareness that slithered up your spine like spilled wine across linen.

At some Tourney, when the royal family stood to receive greetings, Rhaegar positioned himself directly behind you. Not beside, not slightly angled, close enough that the heat of his body radiated through the thin silk of your gown. You felt his exhale stir the loose hairs at your nape, smelled the lemon verbena from his morning bath mingling with something darker, muskier. When you shifted to put space between you, he merely stepped forward to fill it, his chest nearly pressing against your back as the banners snapped in the wind.

His lips against your cheek during formal greetings lingered a fraction too long now, not the dry peck of childhood, but something moist and deliberate. You'd turn your face at the last moment, offering only the corner of your jaw, yet still feel the damp imprint of his mouth cooling on your skin like a brand. Once, when you'd been too slow to dodge, his tongue had flickered out...so fast you might have imagined it, tasting the salt of your skin before pulling away with a low hum that vibrated through your bones.

The worst was his breathing. Standing behind you at court functions, Rhaegar would inhale deeply through his nose as if committing your scent to memory. You'd hear the rustle of his doublet as his chest expanded, catch the faintest hitch in his throat when he caught traces of your perfume mixed with your own natural musk. Sometimes, when the hall grew loud with chatter, you'd swear you felt the brush of his nose along your hairline, ghosting over the shell of your ear before he remembered himself and pulled back.

He had come one night to bid you goodnight, Elia seemed to not be able to start his desires, so he felt the need to see you before her. You looked so very pretty with your hair down and nightgown clinging to your soft skin

He stared at you long, a touch to your cheek, twirling your hair…it was all too much, and he could not stop himself and leaned forward without much thinking.

The kiss tasted of stolen things, pomegranate wine and desperation, his lips pressing against yours with a bruising intensity that left your teeth aching. Rhaegar pulled away before you could gasp, before you could scream, his fingers lingering at your jawline as he murmured, "Sleep well, sweet sister" like he hadn't just fractured the world. The door clicked shut behind him, leaving you standing in the pooling silence of your chambers, fingertips pressed to your mouth where his teeth had scraped.

You waited until his footsteps faded down the corridor before moving, before breathing. The rush of fabric against stone was too loud as you gathered your skirts, the slap of bare feet against marble echoing like a drumbeat as you ran past the guards who knew better than to question a princess in the dead of night, through the labyrinthine halls that suddenly felt too narrow. The knock you rapped against your parents' chamber door was frantic, knuckles stinging from the force of it.

Queen Rhaella opened the door in her nightgown, candlelight catching the silver in her hair. One look at your face…lips still swollen, eyes wild, and she pulled you inside without a word. King Aerys sat up in bed, his gaze sharper than it had been in years as you choked out the truth between shuddering breaths, Rhaegar's lingering touches, the way he crowded you at court, the sounds that slithered under your chamber door night after night, and now…now this.

The candle between them guttered, casting jagged shadows across Aerys' sunken face, he had always had some sanity and soft spot for you. Rhaella's fingers tightened around yours that were cold and trembling, as the king exhaled through his nose in a slow, measured breath that smelled of sour wine. "We knew" he said at last, each word weighted like a hammer blow. "Gods help us, we knew."

The silence in the royal chambers was thicker than the Myrish tapestries lining the walls. You watched your father's fingers twitch against the armrest of his chair, once manicured nails now bitten raw, the same way they'd been during the worst of his madness. "He's always been…particular about you" Aerys murmured, his voice scraping like a rusted hinge. "Even as a kid, he'd scream when the wet nurses took you from his arms."

The silence after your father's confession stretched tight enough to snap. The truth settled like hot wax between your ribs, they had known. All those years of Rhaegar's lingering touches, his fevered glances across the feast tables, the way Elia's muffled sobs carried your name through castle walls, your parents had heard it all and done nothing.

The silence stretched between you like a frayed rope, taut with the weight of everything unspoken. Your mother's fingers tightened around yours, too warm, too damp...while your father stared at the dying candle flame as if it held the answers to all the realm's sins.

The candle between them guttered, sending wax spilling over the silver holder in slow, inevitable rivulets. You watched it pool like the dread settling in your stomach before speaking the words that had been clawing at your throat since Rhaegar's lips left their brand on yours. "Send me away." The plea cracked open the heavy silence, raw as a fresh wound. "Not to a lord's bed, but to the gods'."

Rhaella's fingers tightened around yours like a falcon's talons, her rings biting into your skin. "The gods' service?" Her voice wavered between relief and grief...relief that you chose the cloister over confession, grief that this was the only sanctuary left.

The candlelight flickered across Aerys' sunken cheeks, carving shadows deep enough to drown in. His fingers, once so regal, now twitching like a dying spider's legs had hovered over the parchment as if fearing the ink might burn him. "You would kneel before stone gods instead of a lord's bed?" His voice was parchment thin, but the question held weight. You saw the moment his resolve cracked, not with the fury of his madness, but with something softer, sadder. The quill scratched across vellum in jagged strokes as he wrote your reprieve with hands that hadn't trembled this way since he'd held you as a babe.

The parchment crackled in your father's grip as he pressed the royal seal into molten wax, the three headed dragon sinking deep, sealing your fate. You watched the wax pool and darken, thinking of Rhaegar's fingers gripping Elia's hips with that same possessive heat.

The knock came at midday, three sharp raps that echoed through your empty chambers. Rhaegar balanced the stem of a midnight orchid between his fingers, plucked fresh from the glass gardens, its petals still beaded with condensation. When no answer came, he knocked again, harder, the silver embroidery of his cuff catching on the door's ironwork. "Sister?" The word slithered through the gap beneath the door, laced with something between annoyance and unease.

He found the door unlocked...an oversight by the servants, no doubt. The hinges groaned as he pushed inside, revealing a chamber stripped bare of you. No discarded shawls draped over the chaise, no half-finished embroidery tangled in the windowsill. The air smelled of lemon oil and nothing else, no trace of your bergamot soap lingering in the drapes. Even the hearth stood cold, the ashes swept clean as a tomb.

The orchid slipped from his fingers, its stem snapping against the marble with a sound like a bone breaking. Rhaegar didn't bend to retrieve it. His boots crushed the petals as he strode to the wardrobe, wrenching open doors to find hollow spaces where your gowns should sway like hanged men. Only a single pearl remained, caught in the joint of a drawer, left behind or deliberately placed, he couldn't tell.

The throne room doors exploded inward with a crash that sent startled pages scrambling like flushed quail. Rhaegar's boots struck marble with enough force to crack the glaze on a Dornish urn, another casualty in his wake, though he hardly noticed the shattered pottery skittering across the floor. The remaining courtiers melted from his path like butter on a hot blade, their whispers dying mid syllable as the prince's silver hair streamed behind him like a battle standard.

Aerys lounged upon the Iron Throne as if sculpted there, fingers steepled beneath his chin. The deliberate stillness of his posture betrayed him, too controlled, too poised, the calm before wildfire ignites. Only the twitch of a tendon in his neck revealed the storm beneath. "Leave us" the king commanded, his voice slicing through the murmurs like Valyrian steel. Not a request. Never a request.

Rhaegar's breath came in ragged bursts, his words slicing through the throne room's hush like a blade through silk. "Someone has stolen my sweet sister—she is gone—" The declaration cracked against the vaulted ceilings, scattering like broken glass across the marble floors. His fingers flexed at his sides, still aching with the phantom memory of your wrist beneath them, the pulse point he'd pressed his thumb against in the sept now vanished like morning mist.

Aerys didn't rise from the throne's jagged embrace. Only his fingers moved, tapping a staccato rhythm against the pommel of his sword where it rested across his knees. "Stolen?" The word dripped with false amusement, thick as honey laced with nightshade. "Or spared?" His gaze, sharp as a falcon's even in his decline, tracked the way Rhaegar's throat worked, the way his silver hair clung to his damp temples like seaweed to a drowning man.

"What?" Rhaegar's chest heaved like a bellows, the word torn from his throat raw and ragged. His fingers flexed at his sides, still aching with the ghost of your wrist beneath them, the delicate bones he'd memorized like a bard memorizes ballads. The throne room blurred around him, the assembled courtiers dissolving into smudges of color as his vision narrowed to the sharp angles of his father's face. "Spared?" The word tasted like rust on his tongue, metallic and wrong. His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out the whispers that skittered through the hall like rats.

The throne room's torches flickered as Aerys rose, his shadow stretching monstrous across the vaulted ceiling. "Spared" he repeated, the word curling like smoke from his lips. His hands—once so regal, now spiderlike, traced the throne's jagged edges as he descended. "From you."

"Where is she?" Rhaegar's voice cracked like a whip across the throne room, the words slicing through the murmurs of the assembled courtiers. His fingers dug into his own palms hard enough to draw blood, four crescent moons blooming in his flesh as his gaze locked onto his father's face. The silence stretched between them, taut as a bowstring, until Aerys exhaled through his nose in a slow, measured breath that smelled of sour wine and betrayal.

"Gone" Aerys said simply, his voice scraped raw from years of whispered paranoia. He spread his hands, palms up, fingers trembling in a mockery of surrender. "Where the gods take all wayward daughters who tempt their brothers." The king's lips twisted around the words as if they were poison on his tongue, his eyes never leaving Rhaegar's face.

Rhaegar's fingers curled into fists at his sides, the embroidered silk of his doublet straining across his shoulders as his breathing grew ragged. The throne room seemed to tilt around him, tapestries swaying unnaturally, the Iron Throne looming larger than life as his father's words settled like hot coals in his gut. "Liar" he hissed through clenched teeth, the word dripping with venom. His boot struck the marble with enough force to send echoes ricocheting off the vaulted ceiling. "She wouldn't. Not without—"

Aerys raised a single, trembling finger, the gesture cutting through Rhaegar's protest like a blade. "Wouldn't she?" The king's voice was parchment thin, but each syllable carried the weight of centuries-old Valyrian steel. His sunken eyes still sharp as obsidian shards, tracked the way Rhaegar's throat worked, the way his pupils dilated like a beast scenting blood. "You left her no choice."

Rhaegar's fingers spasmed at his sides, the crescent wounds in his palms weeping tiny rivulets of blood onto the marble. "Liar" he hissed again, the word curling from his lips like smoke from a funeral pyre. The throne room tilted on its axis, the assembled courtiers dissolving into smudges of color as his vision narrowed to the cruel twist of his father's mouth.

Aerys merely arched a brow, the motion sending shadows pooling in the hollows of his sunken cheeks. "Deny it all you like, boy." His voice was a serpent sliding through dry grass...soft, deadly. "But the truth remains...she knelt before the High Septon this dawn and took her vows with more devotion than you've ever shown to anything but your own perversions."

The truth hit Rhaegar like a Warhammer to the chest. He could feel his ribs cracking beneath the weight of it, each breath a jagged shard of glass in his lungs. His father's words...so casually cruel, hung between them like the stench of burning flesh after wildfire.

"You did this." Rhaegar's voice was barely human, a guttural rasp that scraped against the throne room's vaulted ceiling. His fingers twitched toward the dagger at his belt before curling into fists again, nails biting fresh crescents into his ruined palms. Blood dripped onto the marble in fat, crimson drops, each one a silent accusation.

Aerys merely smiled, that thin, terrible smile that had preceded a thousand horrors. "Did I?" The king leaned forward on the Iron Throne, the blades scraping against his emaciated frame. "Or did you drive her to it with those sweaty, grasping hands of yours?" His gaze dropped pointedly to Rhaegar's bloodied fingers. "Tell me, boy...did you think she wouldn't notice how you sniffed after her like some bitch in heat?"

Rhaegar saw red.

His boots struck the flagstones like hammer blows, each impact vibrating up through his thighs as he stormed from the throne room. Not toward his own chambers, not toward the cooling orchid still crushed beneath his heel, but toward Elia's solar where she sat embroidering. The silk ripped beneath his fingers when he seized her wrist, the needle clattering to the floor as her startled gasp filled the corridor.

"Walk." he commanded through clenched teeth, his grip tightening until her bones ground together. Elia stumbled to keep pace, her slippered feet skidding on polished marble as he hauled her toward your vacant chambers. The guards averted their eyes, princes did as they pleased, and bruises could always be explained later.

The door to your chambers burst inward with enough force to crack the jamb, swinging drunkenly on its hinges as Rhaegar dragged Elia across the threshold. The scent of bergamot still lingered here, faint as a ghost, but enough to make his nostrils flare. He shoved Elia toward the bed where you once slept, her knees hitting the edge as she caught herself on hands that trembled.

"Don't put your fucking slippers on her bed" Rhaegar scoffed, kicking off his own boots with such force one struck the wardrobe with a hollow thud. Elia froze halfway through removing her embroidered slippers, her fingers trembling above the pristine linens. The prince's nostrils flared as he stared at the indentation her knee had made in the mattress, a blasphemous disruption of the perfect plane where you used to sleep.

Elia's breath hitched as Rhaegar's fingers tangled in her hair, yanking her head back until her throat arched like a swan's before slaughter. "You'll wear her scent tonight" he murmured, pressing his lips to the fluttering pulse beneath her jaw, not kissing, just inhaling, as if trying to suck you out of her pores. The vial he produced from his doublet was unmistakable, your bergamot oil, stolen from your abandoned vanity. When he uncorked it, the scent unfurled like a betrayal between them.

Elia's fingers dug into the embroidered counterpane, your counterpane as Rhaegar pressed her face down into the pillows that still faintly smelled of you. He hadn't bothered to remove her gown, merely shoved the skirts up past her hips with the same careless efficiency one might use to clear a table. The vial of bergamot oil lay spilled across the bedside table, its contents soaking into the wood grain like a shameful secret.

"You're not even looking at me" Elia whispered, her voice muffled by the pillowcase monogrammed with three headed dragons. Rhaegar's hands, those elegant musician's fingers were splayed possessively across the small of her back, but his gaze remained fixed on the rumpled sheets beside them. His thumbs traced idle circles against her spine, following some invisible pattern only he could see, the ghostly imprint of where your body might have lain.

The bedchamber door stood ajar, an unspoken invitation for servants to bear witness. Maids clustered in the corridor with pitchers of wine they didn't need, their eyes wide as Rhaegar's murmured endearments drifted into the hall. "Sweet sister..." he groaned into Elia's shoulder, his teeth scraping the Dornish gold at her collarbone. "My sweet, sweet—"

Elia arched beneath him with a gasp that sounded suspiciously like a sob. The sheets...your sheets, tangled between their legs as Rhaegar rutted against her with the single-minded focus of a man trying to wear through fabric by sheer force of will. His forehead pressed against the headboard where your braid might have brushed the carved wood each morning, his lips moving soundlessly against the polished oak.

Rhaegar caught her wrist and pressed her palm flat against the pillow where your head once lay. "Can you feel it?" His voice was hoarse from overuse, the words slurred with wine and something darker. "The dent her skull left in the feathers?" His fingers guided hers along invisible contours only he could see, the ghost of your brow, the dip of your cheekbone, the hollow where your neck had warmed the linen.

Elia's answering shudder had nothing to do with pleasure. The entire castle knew what happened in the prince's chambers at night, knew how he whispered your name against Elia's sweat slicked skin, how he ordered the laundresses never to change your bed linens. The maids whispered that he'd taken to sleeping in your vacant room, his naked body curled around the indentation your form had left in the mattress.

Every night Elia would come and go out of your old chamber.

The chamber door creaked shut behind Elia for the seventh night in a row, the sound swallowed by the oppressive silence of your abandoned rooms. Rhaegar's fingers curled into the bed linens, still unwashed despite the servants' protests...inhaling the fading trace of bergamot and sleep-warmed skin. His knee pressed into the depression your body had left in the mattress, the exact shape memorized like a blind man reads braille.

A choked sound escaped him when he dragged his face across your pillowcase, the fabric damp with either sweat or something more shameful. His hips moved of their own accord, grinding against the rumpled sheets with the same desperation a dying man claws at his last vial of water. The silk clung to his thighs, the friction almost painful as he chased the ghost of you between the threads.

"Gods..." he gasped into the hollow your head had left, the word fracturing like ice under too much weight. His fingers dug into the mattress where your hips would have been, nails tearing through fine Myrish lace as if he could reach through the feathers and pluck you back from whatever sept you'd buried yourself in. The bedframe groaned beneath his frantic movements, each thrust a silent scream against your absence.

Moonlight pooled in the empty spaces you'd once occupied, the chair by the window where you'd brushed your hair, the rug before the hearth where you'd warmed your feet. Rhaegar's teeth bared in a silent snarl as he rutted against nothing, his release spilling across linen that no longer smelled like you. He collapsed face-first into the pillow, his ragged breaths hot enough to steam the silver embroidery of dragons beneath his cheek.

Elia found him like that at dawn, barely dressed, sprawled across your sheets with his mouth still pressed to the pillow's indent. She didn't flinch when his fingers lashed out to snare her wrist, dragging her down beside him with none of his usual grace. "You'll wear this today" he murmured against her pulse point, pressing your favorite perfume into her palm, the stopper already loosened, the scent clinging to his fingertips like a second skin.

Elia's fingers closed around the perfume vial like a prisoner accepting their shackles. The glass was warm from Rhaegar's grip, the amber liquid inside catching the dawn light like liquid gold. She hesitated, just for a heartbeat before uncorking it with a pop that sounded obscenely loud in the tomb like silence of your abandoned chamber.

The second Elia dabbed the perfume behind her ears...your scent, thick as sin, Rhaegar’s lips split into a razor’s smile. He sat up abruptly, the sheets pooling around his waist like molten silver, and dragged her close by the sash of her morning robe. His kiss tasted of desperation and last night’s wine, teeth scraping her bottom lip as he murmured, "You are such a good wife." His thumb swiped across the pulse in her throat, smearing the bergamot deeper into her skin. "Almost perfect."

Almost. The word lodged in Elia’s ribs like a splinter. She knew what he meant...knew he measured the arch of her brows against yours, the slope of her shoulders against the memory of yours under his hands. When Rhaegar’s fingers tangled in her hair, twisting the dark strands as if he could reshape them into silver. When he pulled back, his pupils were blown wide, but his gaze slid past her to the vacant space beside the window where you used to sit, combing your hair in the dawn light.

A month without seeing your silver braid flicker in torchlight had honed his rage to a razor's edge. Across the chamber, Rhaella's fingers trembled around her wine goblet, her violet eyes darting between her husband and son like a doe caught between two circling dragons.

The hatred had teeth. It gnawed at Rhaegar’s ribs each time he sat at the high table, watching his father pick at roasted pheasant with fingers blackened by ink and paranoia. Every twitch of Aerys’s lips, the way they curled around a grape like it might poison him had sent fresh venom pooling beneath Rhaegar’s tongue. A month without your silver laughter in the halls had turned his grief into something sharper, darker. His knife scraped across the plate, a sound like bones dragged over stone.

It gnawed each night as he lay awake in your cold, untouched bed, staring at the canopy where moths had begun chewing holes in the silk, little voids expanding like his father's influence. Dawn found him still awake more often than not, fingers tracing the knife he kept beneath your pillow, imagining how Aerys's parchment thin skin would part beneath the blade. Not a quick death. Never quick. Something slow enough to watch the understanding dawn in those sunken eyes.

The blade sang as Rhaegar drew it from beneath the pillow, your pillow...the Valyrian steel catching the first pallid light of dawn like a smirk. He tested the edge against his thumb, watching a bead of blood well and spill, tracing the path his father's life might take when slit from navel to throat. The thought warmed him more than any hearth ever had.

Rhaegar stirred the poison into his father's wine himself, the powdered nightshade dissolving into the Dornish red like shadows swallowing dusk. His fingers didn't tremble, they never did when cruelty was required, but the spoon handle left grooves in his palm that would linger for hours, across the table, Aerys picked at his pheasant with blackened nails, his sunken eyes darting between courtiers as if they might sprout daggers. The king's paranoia had become its own kind of poison, eating him from the inside out long before Rhaegar's intervention.

Rhaegar's fingers lingered a heartbeat too long on the wine goblet's stem as he placed it on the serving girl's tray, his thumb brushing the rim where a drop of poison might cling. The girl, barely more than a child with her freckled cheeks and frayed sleeves flinched at his touch but held steady when he plucked the untouched goblet from her tray instead.

"An exchange, little dove" he murmured, swirling the deep red liquid before taking a slow sip. The wine was too sweet, clinging to his teeth like syrup, but he drank deeply while watching his father over the rim. "Take it to the king, he needs a refill don't you think?"

The serving girl's knuckles whitened around the poisoned goblet. Rhaegar watched her shuffle toward the high table, how her shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow, how her gaze darted to the exits like a sparrow gauging flight. Aerys didn't look up when she placed the wine at his elbow, his ink-stained fingers too busy tracing paranoid patterns across the arms of the Iron Throne.

Aerys fingers twitched first, spasms spidering across the ink-stained parchment like black veins spreading. He blinked, slow as a dying lizard-lion, when the throne room's torches suddenly blurred into smears of gold. The cough began as a tickle, a whisper of nightshade roots unfurling in his lungs, then erupted into wet, shuddering hacks that sent courtiers skittering back like startled crabs.

The goblet clattered from Aerys’ fingers, wine splattering the steps of the Iron Throne like spilled blood. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps, each inhale a death rattle, each exhale flecked with spittle and something darker. The court froze, a collective inhale held too long, as the king’s head lolled against the jagged blades at his back.

Rhaegar bit back a laugh, a jagged, splintered sound that caught in his throat like a fishhook before stepping forward with deliberate, heavy steps. His boots struck the flagstones with enough force to send vibrations through the marrow of every courtier who'd ever whispered behind his back. In the corner, the serving girl pressed herself into the shadows, her ragged sleeve shoved between her teeth to muffle the whimper building in her chest. She stayed silent when Rhaegar tilted his head toward the vaulted ceiling and bellowed, "MAESTER!" with the word ricocheting off the stained-glass windows like a hurled battleaxe.

The maester's pronouncement of death came with all the solemnity of a merchant declaring spoiled meat. Rhaella's knuckles whitened around her embroidery hoop, the needle piercing through silver silk in a perfect, practiced stab. Not a single pearl of grief rolled down her powdered cheeks, only the ghost of a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth before she remembered herself.

Rhaegar's coronation robes smelled of mothballs and funeral incense. The gold embroidery itched against his collarbones where sweat pooled in the hollows, your absence a phantom itch no scratching could relieve. He kept expecting to see your silver braid glinting among the mourners, but only Elia stood stiff backed beside him, her wrists heavy with the bracelets you'd left behind.

The High Septon's voice droned through the sept's incense thick air like a dying wasp, but Rhaegar heard none of it. His fingers, clenched around the ceremonial scepter, were numb. The crown weighed less than a goblet but pressed into his brow like a branding iron. The crown had barely settled on Rhaegar’s brow before he ordered you be contacted for "fathers funeral".

The rhythm of the septry had become a second skin, dawn prayers scented with beeswax and crushed lavender, evenings spent embrouring through manuscripts with ink-stained fingers. You'd learned to laugh again here, muffling giggles behind your sleeves when Sister Alys fumbled the incense burner during High Prayer.

"Septa" chirped Novice Lyna one mist-grey morning, her freckled nose scrunched in excitement. She thrust a letter at you so abruptly the wax seal scraped your palm. "From the capital!"

The parchment smelled of bergamot. Your fingers spasmed, nearly dropping it.

Sister Alys plucked it from your trembling hands with a wink. "Shall I read it first, dove? In case it's some lovesick knight's poetry?" The other septas' laughter fluttered like prayer flags around you as she broke the seal then froze. The color drained from her face so completely the faded scar across her brow stood out livid.

The seal of black wax stamped with the three headed dragon had cracked down the middle like a split skull. Sister Alys’ thumb trembled as she smoothed the parchment open, her breath hitching when the scent of bergamot oil wafted up like a ghost from the inked words.

The parchment slipped from Sister Alys's fingers like a dead bird. You caught it before it hit the flagstones, too late to stop the words from searing themselves across your vision in black ink and bergamot scented venom.

The parchment stuck to your fingers...too warm, too alive. You read the first line twice before your vision tunneled

"By order of His Grace, King Rhaegar I…"

The ink blurred. You blinked and saw him smirking in the margins, his quill carving each word like a scalpel flaying skin.

The letter's edges curled like dying leaves against your palms. The ink seemed to pulse "Come home, sweet sister" each looping stroke of Rhaegar's hand a noose tightening around your throat. Behind you, Sister Alys made a sound like a wounded animal, her rough fingers closing around your elbow as if to anchor you to the present. The scent of bergamot was stronger now, clinging to the parchment with unnatural persistence. Had he soaked the damn thing in it?

You hadn't smelled it since the night you'd fled, when the last traces had lingered on your pillowcase like a stain. Now it seeped from the parchment in nauseating waves, the scent so potent you could almost feel Rhaegar's fingers pressing the oil into the paper fibers, deliberate as a brand.

The funeral notice fluttered in your grip. Father's pyre. Seven days hence. Mandatory attendance for all members of House Targaryen, no exceptions for septas sworn to the Faith. The ink seemed to pulse where Rhaegar had signed it with a flourish that carved through the parchment, the tail of the 'R' jagged like a claw mark.

The ride home felt as if it was a death sentence.

The carriage wheels crunched over gravel-like bones beneath a boot, each revolution bringing the Red Keep’s jagged silhouette closer. You pressed your forehead to the glass...cold, clammy...watching the towers spear the dusk. They’d sent a royal escort, of course. Black banners snapped like vultures’ wings beside the windows, and the knights’ armor gleamed dull as old blood in the failing light.

"Princess..." the guard murmured as his gauntleted fingers closed around yours, a title you hadn't heard in months, one that now sat as heavy as a collar around your throat. You withdrew your hand too quickly, the metal scraping your knuckles raw, but the sting was nothing compared to the pressure building behind your ribs. At the top of the serpentine steps, Rhaegar stood haloed by torchlight, his violet eyes reflecting the flames like twin pyres. Your mother's skeletal fingers clutched his elbow, her mourning veil fluttering in the evening wind like a shroud caught on a tombstone.

The weight of the septa wimple pressed against your temple like a vice, starched linen tight enough to blur the edges of your vision, framing Rhaegar's displeasure in perfect focus. His gaze crawled from your hidden hair to your high-necked robes buttoned to the collarbone, to your clasped hands. Something dark flickered behind his eyes when you dipped into the precise, shallow curtsey reserved for kings, not brothers.

The silk wimple encased your head like a chastity belt made of fabric, its stiff folds swallowing every strand of silver that had once made Rhaegar's fingers twitch toward his dagger hilt in court. You kept your eyes lowered, not in submission, but to avoid the way his gaze kept catching on the high neckline of your robes, where starched linen met the sharp angle of your jaw. The modesty of your attire was a calculated insult, every stitch a whispered no to the hunger coiled behind his carefully arranged mourning expression.

"Your Grace" you mumbled, bowing your head low enough that the stiff wimple brushed your collarbones...a physical barrier between his gaze and the silver hair he’d once twisted around his fingers like a noose.

Rhaegar laughed, the sound sharp as shattered glass in the silent courtyard. His fingers closed around yours before you could retreat, tugging you into a hug that crushed your ribs against the gold embroidery of his mourning doublet. You stiffened as his nose scrunched against your wimple, inhaling deeply where your neck met the starched linen. "Do not be so formal, sweet sister" he murmured, lips grazing the fabric like a man tasting poison. His exhale hitched with a fractional pause before he added "You smell different."

Bergamot. The realization slithered through you. He’d expected to find it clinging to your skin still, the scent he’d forced onto Elia like a second skin. Instead, you smelled of septry soap and lavender, scrubbed raw for months to erase every trace of him.

"It's, uhm… lavender" you mumbled, your voice fraying at the edges as Rhaegar's gaze crawled over you like a physical weight. His fingers twitched against the starched linen of your wimple, once a sanctuary, now a provocation... you felt the exact moment his patience snapped. The fabric tore with a sound like a sigh, releasing your silver braid with a violence that sent pins skittering across the courtyard stones.

Your hair tumbled free, lighter than he remembered, bleached by months of sunlit prayer gardens instead of torched castle corridors. Rhaegar's breath hitched audibly when he buried his fingers in it, his grip tightening just shy of pain as he inhaled. "Lavender..." he repeated, the word curling like smoke between his teeth. His thumb brushed your hair where the braid had lain, tracing the indentations left by tight woven piety.

"I suppose anything smells lovely on you" Rhaegar mumbled with a sigh, his fingers lingering in your hair like a man touching a relic. He cleared his throat, the sound ragged, his hands trembling as they finally withdrew, but not before tugging one silver strand taut enough to make your scalp prickle. Across the courtyard, your mother's skeletal fingers twitched against her mourning veil.

"Hello, my dove" Rhaella murmured, stepping forward with the brittle grace of a woman walking on shattered glass. Her kiss grazed your cheekbone, dry lips that smelled of mint and something faintly medicinal. Up close, you could see the cracks in her composure... the way her pupils didn't quite meet yours, how her grip on your elbow was both too tight and trembling. "How pious you look" she added, her voice feather light as her gaze darted to Rhaegar's clenched jaw. The words hung between you like a noose.

"Your father has died, and we are all sad," Rhaella lied smoothly, the practiced tremor in her voice as thin as the mourning veil clinging to her collarbones. Her fingers fluttered like trapped moths against her skirts...too restless for genuine grief. Behind her, Rhaegar's stillness was worse. His gaze carved into you with the precision of a scalpel, his fingers twitching at his sides as if already imagining the weight of your silver braid wrapped around them again.

Rhaella's brittle smile cracked further. "But he has left you another sibling." The words slithered out, broken and hesitant, as her knuckles whitened around the fabric of her gown. You followed her gaze downward instinctively to the flat plane of her stomach beneath layers of black silk. No swell. No quickening. Just the ghost of Aerys's last cruelty curling like smoke between her ribs.

The hinges screamed when Rhaegar shouldered open your chamber door, a sound like a wounded animal, too loud for disuse. Dust should have billowed. None did. Your slippers left no prints in the undisturbed rushes as you crossed the threshold, the scent of bergamot so thick it coated your tongue like oil. The bed linens lay rumpled, the indentation of a body still pressed into the left side where you'd always slept. Fresh.

"Welcome home" Rhaegar murmured, his knuckles whitening around the doorframe. His pupils dilated as you perched on the mattress edge, the featherbed sighing beneath your weight in a way that made his throat bob. A single pearl of sweat traced his temple. You didn't yet recognize the cadence of the bedframe's protests, the particular creak when weight settled just so, the headboard's rhythmic tap against the stone that still echoed in his bones each dawn.

Your fingers brushed a stray hair on the pillow...long, silver. Too fresh to be yours. Rhaegar's breath stuttered when you lifted it to the light, his boots shifting restlessly against the floorboards. The strand coiled around your finger like a noose. His.

Rhaegar bit his thumbnail raw as he watched you, the jagged edge catching on his smile, a predator’s grin, all teeth and no warmth. "Guess the maids have not cleaned since you last been here" he hummed, dragging his tongue over the torn cuticle. His boots scuffed through the layer of dust coating the floorboards, leaving trails like fingers dragged through ash. You stared at the pillow where his silver hair still coiled, the scent of him clinging to the linen like a stain.

He moved abruptly, throwing open the wardrobe doors with a violence that made the hinges shriek. Inside, your old gowns hung untouched or so you had thought, faded silks and velvets preserved like corpses in a tomb. His fingers brushed a black mourning dress, its low neckline and long sleeves a mockery of your septa’s robes. Beside it, a veil of sheer black lace, delicate as a spider’s web. "For the funeral" he said, too quickly, his voice cracking on the last syllable. The fabric whispered as he lifted it and walked over, the lace catching on his calloused fingertips like it might tear.

"Thank you, brother" you murmured, fingers brushing the sheer black lace of the mourning veil. The fabric slithered like a living thing between your fingers,too delicate, too translucent. You forced your voice steady. "But is it not a little revealing for a funeral?"

Rhaegar's knuckles whitened around the hanger. The wardrobe door groaned as he leaned closer, his breath stirring the lace where it draped over your wrist. "Father adored seeing you in black" he said softly. His thumb traced the neckline of the dress, low enough to expose collarbones, high enough to pretend at modesty. "It made your hair look like moonlight on a grave."

and so, you wore it.

The wind tore at your mourning veils like a thing alive, the black lace biting into your cheeks with every gust. You stood rigid between Elia and your mother, the three of you trembling like reeds in the storm. The pyre before you spat embers into the dark, the flames devouring Aerys’s shrouded form with unnatural hunger. Rhaegar should have been standing beside Elia...his wife, his queen...but instead you felt the heat of him at your back, closer than any brother had a right to be. His breath fogged against the nape of your neck, slow and deliberate, as if tasting the absence of bergamot in your scent.

The tear slipped down your cheek, not for the pyre’s smoldering remains, not for the father who’d saved you letting you turn to the Faith, but for the heat of Rhaegar’s breath against your nape. His fingers laced through yours beneath the veil’s black lace, squeezing just shy of pain, his thumb pressing into your pulse point as if counting each flutter of terror. The veil hid the tear’s trail, but you felt its salt sting like a brand.

You glanced to Elia, only to find her already staring at you, her dark eyes wide and liquid with something worse than fear. Pity. The realization hit like a slap. Her fingers twitched toward you beneath the veil's shadow, an aborted gesture that died halfway, curling into her palm like a wounded thing. You looked away before she could see your face twist.

The pyre crackled, spitting embers onto Rhaegar's boots. He didn't flinch. His grip on your hand tightened, his thumb pressing into your pulse point with clinical precision, counting each rabbit quick beat. Elia's breath hitched when his free hand rose to tuck a wind-tossed strand of your hair behind your ear, his fingers lingering against your jawline.

Rhaegar's fingers curled around yours with possessive pressure, lifting your joined hands toward the pyre like an offering to the flames. His palm burned against your knuckles, not with grief, but with something feverish and alive. The firelight carved hollows beneath his cheekbones, turning his smile into a skeletal rictus. "Will you miss him, sweet sister?" His thumb stroked the delicate bones of your wrist, tracing the pulse beneath skin still tender from scrubbing septry soap into it for months. "I won't." The confession slithered out, effortless as breath. "He forced you into being a septa. I know."

You swallowed the truth like a lump of obsidian...sharp, choking and impossible to dislodge. 'I wanted it. I chose it.' The words would have been a knife between his ribs. Instead you let your silence confirm his delusion, watching his shoulders relax incrementally when you didn't contradict him. His exhale warmed the lace of your veil where it clung to your temple.

"I have missed you so much" Rhaegar mumbled against your veil, the words damp and hot through the black lace. His fingers lifted the hem with aching slowness, the fabric sliding like a sigh over your face as he pressed closer behind you, close enough that you felt the hard line of his belt through your mourning gown, the uneven hitch of his breath against your nape. His head ducked beneath the veil, a stolen moment in the lace-shrouded dark, and his lips grazed your cheekbone...not a kiss, but the ghost of one, lingering too long to be chaste. The bergamot on his skin made your stomach twist.

Rhaella's sharp inhale cut through the crackling pyre. You caught her reflection in the polished breastplate of a Kings guard, her lips pressed into a bloodless line, her fingers knotting in her skirts like she was gripping a phantom dagger. The same look she'd worn when Aerys used to corner her in the throne room's shadowed alcoves, whispering promises that stank of wildfire and madness.

Elia tossed another blood red rose onto the pyre, her dark eyes fixed on the flames. The petals blackened instantly, curling like fingernails in the heat. She didn't flinch when Rhaegar's hand slid around your waist beneath the veil, only adjusted her own lace headdress with deliberate precision, tugging it forward until her face vanished behind its sheer curtain. A queen's retreat.

The pyre's embers spiraled upward like dying fireflies, catching in the black lace of your veil. Rhaegar's fingers tightened around your waist, not guiding, not comforting, but claiming. His thumb pressed into the dip above your hipbone with the same possessive certainty as the dragon sigil stamped into the cracked wax of his letter. Across the flames, Elia's silhouette blurred behind her veil, her shoulders rigid beneath the weight of borrowed jewels...your jewels, their silver chains biting into her collarbones like teeth.

The silence in your chamber had weight thick as the dust motes swirling in the slant of moonlight through the barred window. You sat on the edge of your childhood bed, fingers pressing into the feather mattress where the indentation of Rhaegar’s body still lingered. The scent of bergamot clung to the pillowcase beneath your palms, stale now, mixed with something sour…sweat, perhaps, or the metallic tang of desperation.

Your fingers trembled as you uncorked the vial of lavender oil, its scent sharp and clean against the cloying bergamot still trapped in the mattress fibers. You poured too much… the oil pooled between your palms like liquid moonlight before dripping onto the sheets. The droplets sank into the linen like water into parched earth, spreading in uneven blotches that darkened the fabric.

The nightgown slithered over your skin like a second betrayal, too thin, too white, the linen whispering against your thighs with every shift toward the door.

You had brushed your hair and climbed into bed, the ritual motions mechanical, one hundred strokes with the silver handled brush, the same one you’d used since girlhood, its bristles now frayed from months of absent overuse. The repetitive motion was supposed to calm you. It didn’t. Each pass tugged at your scalp like a reprimand, the bristles catching on tangles that hadn’t existed before your fingers started shaking. The scent of lavender oil rose from your palms, clashing with the bergamot still leaching from the pillows.

Your hair spilled over the pillows like molten silver, the strands catching stray moonlight through the barred window, too bright, too restless. You’d braided it tightly before bed, but the plait had unraveled hours ago, victim to your tossing and the way your fingers kept creeping up to worry the ends. The scent of lavender clung to your palms, but beneath it, bergamot lurked like a ghost in the linen. You pressed your face into the pillow and inhaled sharply, as if you could suffocate the memory of his hands in your hair earlier that evening, the way his nails had scraped your scalp when he tore the wimple away.

Rhaegar had grown used to sleeping in your room…or rather, the ghost of you in it, and now the silence of his own chambers gnawed at him like a starving dog. He tossed, the silk sheets twisting around his legs like grasping fingers. He turned, punching the pillow that smelled of nothing but his own sweat. Finally, he sat up sharply, his silver hair tangled from restless hands running through it all night. The indentation in your mattress still held the shape of his body better than his own damned bed ever would.

Rhaegar exhaled into the silence of his chambers, fingers curling into the emptiness beside him where the mattress dipped unnaturally, the ghost weight of you pressing into the sheets. His eyelids fluttered shut, imagining the way moonlight would catch on your collarbone if he slipped a hand beneath your nightgown, how your breath would hitch when his thumb brushed the delicate hollow of your throat. The fantasy was so vivid he could almost smell the lavender oil on your skin instead of the bergamot saturating his own.

A sharp knock shattered the illusion. Ser Arthur’s voice, muffled through oak "Your Grace, the princess has retired to her chambers."

"Good." Rhaegar's voice slithered through the darkness, too soft, too pleased. His fingers tapped an uneven rhythm against the bedpost, once, twice, the bitten down nail catching on the carved dragon's wing. "Fetch Ser Gerold." A pause. "And we can go."

Elia had seen him walking the hall with men in tow, her fingers twiddling together. The funeral showed how needy he was to touch his sister, to ruin her, and Elia mentally prepared to be the outlet of his frustration. Rhaegar had only glanced at her while he walked towards her, their eyes meeting and she prepared for him to enter her chamber…only for his feet to keep moving, brushing past her and down the hall, to a room she began to know all too well.

Elia didn’t stop him…didn’t want to. Of course she felt guilty…she was letting him go to your room…knowing you are there, knew what was to happen to her good sister… and yet her feet did not move…just slid into her chamber and slowly closed the door, thankful for the fact it was not her.. guilty for the fact it was you.

Rhaegar's fingers twitched against the doorframe. His breath came too fast, the sound wet and uneven in the torchlit corridor. Behind him, Ser Gerold shifted, the white cloak whispering against stone, but it was Ser Arthur who met his gaze when he turned. The Sword of Morning's face was a mask of polished steel, but his grip tightened on Dawn's hilt as Rhaegar's lips parted.

"Just… stay here." The words slithered out, frayed at the edges like torn parchment. Rhaegar's throat worked, his Adam's apple bobbing above the high collar of his mourning doublet. "Remember…" His hand rose, trembling, to press against the oak, palm flat, fingers splayed like he could feel your heartbeat through the wood. "No one comes in…" A pause, too long, his pupils dilating until the violet was swallowed. "Or out. Until I do."

"Yes, Your Grace." The words tasted like rust on Gerold's tongue, but he swallowed them dutifully, his white cloak pooling around his boots as he stepped aside. The hinges didn't scream this time, Rhaegar had oiled them himself that afternoon, his long fingers working the mechanism with the same care he'd once reserved for his harp. The door swung open silently, revealing only a sliver of moonlit bed and the curve of your shoulder beneath a linen so thin it might as well have been mist.

Rhaegar exhaled through his nose, the sound trembling at the edges like a plucked string. His boots left no prints in the rushes as he crossed the threshold, the scent of lavender hitting him like a fist. It clung to everything, the bedsheets, the braided rug, the stray silver hairs caught in the bristles of your brush on the vanity. His fingers twitched toward it before curling into his palm. He'd expected resistance. He'd prepared for it. The way you'd doused the room in lavender instead of bergamot was a defiance he hadn't anticipated.

Rhaegar stood frozen in the doorway, his fingers flexing at his sides like he was already imagining the weight of your hair between them. Moonlight painted the bed in fractured silver, the same bed where he'd spent countless nights pressing his face into your abandoned pillow, inhaling the ghost of your scent until his lungs ached. The same bed where he'd dragged Elia by the wrist last winter, forcing her to lie precisely where you'd once slept while he buried his nose in her dark hair and pretended. The same bed where he'd broken three goblets against the headboard when news reached him of your vows.

His boot scuffed against a loose floorboard, the one that always groaned when weight shifted toward the left side. He knew every sigh of this room better than his own chambers: the way the curtains fluttered when the sea wind caught them, the exact spot where the headboard would knock against the wall if rocked with enough force. He'd tested that last one himself, with Elia's thighs clamped around his hips and her face twisted away so he wouldn't see her silent weeping.

Rhaegar's fingers curled around the bedpost like a drowning man clutching driftwood, his knuckles bleaching white against the dark wood grain. He lifted one foot, then the other, peeling off the slippers with exaggerated care as if each movement required surgical precision, as if the slightest misstep might shatter the fragile silence. The discarded silk pooled at his feet like shed skin, whispering against the rushes as he nudged them aside with his foot.

The blanket rustled as he gathered it in both hands, his breath hitching audibly when the fabric slipped from your sleeping form. Moonlight spilled across the bed in a liquid silver puddle, illuminating the dip of your waist beneath the thin nightgown, the way your fingers had curled loosely around the pillow’s edge in sleep. Or the illusion of it.

His thumb brushed your ankle...once...twice, the touch featherlight but deliberate, testing the boundary between accident and intention. When you didn’t stir, his fingers climbed higher, tracing the delicate ridge of your shin through the linen. The scent of lavender rose with each inch of exposed skin, so thick it should have choked him. Instead, he inhaled greedily, his nose skimming the inside of your knee where the oil had been applied most liberally.

His body was thrumming, not with grief, not with anger, but with something hotter and infinitely more shameful. The need to touch crackled beneath his skin like wildfire, the sensation so acute it hurt to breathe. Your braid had come loose, victim to restless tossing, the silver strands fanned across the pillow like spilled mercury. Rhaegar's fingers twitched at the sight, remembering the exact resistance of your hair wrapped around his fist earlier in the courtyard, not yielding, never yielding, but taut enough to make his pulse stutter.

The mattress groaned as he climbed over you, one knee pressing into the featherbed beside your hip. The sound was familiar, the same creak that had punctuated winter nights when he'd pace this room, imagining you here.

The scent of lavender clung to your skin like armor, but Rhaegar was learning its contours, the way it spiked when your pulse fluttered beneath his fingertips, how it deepened where your thighs met. His nose inhaled sharply through his nose, nostrils flaring as he pressed closer between your legs, the movement effortless as a sword sliding into a well-worn scabbard. "Better..." he murmured against your collarbone, teeth grazing the spot where bergamot used to linger in the hollows. His hands slid beneath your thighs with practiced ease, lifting them over his hips as you shifted instinctively, a reflex honed from childhood bedsharing, back when his touch didn't make your stomach twist like wet silk.

The mouth against your neck was wet with confession, the words spilling into your skin like hot wax. "Father made us share this chamber" Rhaegar murmured against your pulse, his hips rolling in a slow, grinding rhythm that had the headboard tapping its familiar cadence against the stone. His fingers tightened on your thigh, not enough to bruise, just enough to feel the muscle twitch beneath his palm. "Because he saw assassins in every shadow." A choked laugh vibrated through his chest as he nosed aside the flimsy neckline of your nightgown. "Madness. But convenient."

Your lashes fluttered against the weight of unnatural drowsiness, too thick, too syrupy for natural sleep. The fog parted in jagged pieces, first the scent of bergamot and wine cloying on Rhaegar’s breath, then the slick heat of his body pressing yours into the mattress, the rhythmic creak of the headboard tapping stone in time with his hips. Your eyes flew open just as his thumb swiped across your bottom lip, the pad rough with harp calluses.

Your eyelids peeled apart like parchment glued shut, too slow...too thick, just as Rhaegar's hips snapped forward in a vicious roll that pinned you deeper into the mattress. His breath hitched when your lashes finally lifted, his pupils swallowing the last remnants of violet as his gaze locked onto your parted lips. There was something obscene about the way his stare dropped instantly to your mouth, as if he'd been waiting for this exact moment, the suspended second between sleep and horror where your throat hadn't yet remembered how to scream.

Your lips parted on a gasp that never came, Rhaegar's palm clamped over your mouth before sound could escape, his fingers pressing into your cheeks with the same possessive certainty as his hips between your thighs. His breath came ragged against your temple, his other hand fisting in the sheets beside your head as he rocked into you with slow, deliberate rolls of his hips. The linen of your nightgown had ridden up, the thin fabric doing nothing to disguise the hardness beneath his breeches, the damp heat where your bodies met.

You screamed against his palm, the sound muffled into something wet and shapeless, your body arching in a frantic twist that only wedged him deeper between your thighs. Rhaegar groaned, a low, pleased sound that vibrated through your ribcage and nipped at the shell of your ear. "Good morning, sweet sister" he murmured, his voice thick with sleep and something darker. His hips rolled in a slow, deliberate circle that ground the hard line of his arousal against your inner thigh. "Did you miss me?"

The taste of bile rose sharp in your throat as Rhaegar's fingers dug into your hips, his grip pressing bruises into your skin through the flimsy nightgown. His breathing had gone ragged, his forehead pressed against yours as his hips moved in shallow, insistent rolls, not quite fucking you, but close enough to make your stomach heave.

The headboard's rhythmic tap-tap-tap against stone filled the chamber, that same maddening cadence you'd spent childhood nights counting like sheep. Only now it wasn't Rhaella's muffled sobs keeping you awake, but the slick sound of Rhaegar's breeches dragging against your inner thighs. His exhales came in short bursts against your temple, each one warmer than the last, his teeth grazing your earlobe with possessive familiarity.

"R-Rhae—stop—" The plea cracked in half like brittle ice, your voice splintering around syllables that tasted of bile and lavender under his palm. His hips stuttered against yours, not in hesitation but in cruel mimicry of obedience, grinding slow enough that you could feel each ridge of his laces through the ruined nightgown. A sound escaped you...small, wounded, involuntary, and Rhaegar's breath hitched as if you'd offered praise instead of protest.

The chamber door shuddered, not from wind, but from the weight of two armored men leaning against it. Ser Gerold's gauntlet squeaked as he adjusted his grip on the hilt of his sword. Ser Arthur's breath fogged against the stone wall beside him, slow and measured, though his knuckles stood white where they gripped Dawn's scabbard. The muffled creak of the bedstead carried through the oak like a confession.

You screamed again...a raw, jagged sound that tore through your throat as Rhaegar's hand slid from your mouth down to tug at your smallclothes. The sound bounced off the stone walls, too loud, too desperate, as if someone might hear. As if someone might come. But there were only two men outside that door, and they were nothing if not loyal to the new king.

Rhaegar chuckled against your collarbone, his breath hot and damp through the thin fabric of your nightgown. "Scream all you like" he murmured, his fingers hooking into the delicate linen at your hip. The sound of ripping fabric was obscenely soft, like tearing parchment before the cool night air hit your bare thighs. "They won't move. Not unless I tell them to." His thumb brushed the inside of your knee, the touch almost tender if not for the way his nails bit crescent moons into your skin when you flinched.

Rhaegar's whisper slithered against your damp cheek like oil on water, too thick, too slick with something that wasn't grief. His fingers traced the line of your jaw with a harpist's precision, calluses catching on your skin as if memorizing its texture anew. "It's better if we both enjoy this, sister" he murmured, the words curling around the shell of your ear like smoke. His hips pressed forward in a slow, deliberate roll that made the bedframe groan its familiar protest. "I want to make you feel as good as I do when you're near."

The bedframe’s groan became a splintering shriek as Rhaegar pinned your wrists above your head, his knees forcing your thighs apart with bruising insistence. Moonlight carved his face into something unrecognizable, sharp cheekbones shadowed hollow, lips parted around ragged breaths, eyes black with pupils blown so wide the violet was swallowed whole. His grip on your wrists was iron, his thumbs pressing into the delicate bones until you felt them grind.

The mattress shifted beneath you like sand sliding into a grave, every movement sinking you deeper into the featherbed’s suffocating embrace. Rhaegar’s weight pinned your hips with terrifying precision, not the clumsy fumbling of a man unused to resistance, but the practiced hold of someone who had rehearsed this moment in his mind a thousand times. His free hand traced the arch of your ribcage through the ruined nightgown, fingertips lingering where the fabric gaped open, as if mapping the spaces between your bones.

The tension crackled in the air, and without a word, he reached out, his fingers brushing against the delicate fabric of her nightdress. In a moment of reckless desperation, he tore the garment, the sound of ripping cloth echoing in the silence.

“Please…please brother—” a pathetic plea, a broken whimper leaving your lips as the nightgown tore open, his fingers already brushing the new skin as you trembled under the sickening touch.

“Sweet girl…sweet sweet sister” he whispered quietly, his head lowering against your stomach as a finger hooked into the small clothes that blocked his view of your lower half. “My wish is not to scare you…but for you to feel the love I’ve had for you the whole of your life.” The whispers were broken, desperate and needy, his touch soft despite your wiggling form trying to free your hands.

His tongue darted out, a moan leaving his lips as it dragged up your tummy and all the way back up to your neck in sickening slowness, your body bare as tears fell the second his fingers tugged down the small clothes trying to cover you. His gaze made more tears fall pathetically and he clicked his tongue while licking them up “So beautiful…even when you cry…”

“Brother—” you had whimpered between little sniffles trying to get him to stop one more time, your hands trembling as he stopped holding them and guided them to the sheets, his voice cutting you off as he pushed himself better between your trembling legs.

“I’ve fucked these sheets more than I can count…more than Elia…” a whisper…a confession and you had swallowed thickly trembling and scared, wet tears sticking and staining the cheeks he loved so much. His thumb came up to stroke the stained skin as the other held your hand on a part of the sheets. “Every night since you left I’ve slept here…fucked Elia here, called her your name…made her wear your fucking clothes—”

He cut himself off with heavy breaths, his body thrumming with need while you yourself seemed to have cried more at his confession, shaking your head and weakly using a free hand to push at his chest to no avail.

You can feel him pushing himself against you, a groan leaving his lips at the friction he craved all his life while his hand moved from your cheek to reach down, lining himself up as you thrashed and pleaded under his weight.

“Rhae— Rhae please… I took a vow! I’m a septa.. you are married—”

“Shhh…sweet girl, don’t cry my love…please, you’ll feel so good…I am king, you… my chosen queen, Elia is nothing…a shadow of you…my family is nothing, you are everything…family, love of my life, a part of me. The faith is nothing, our love will be everything…fuck your vows and fuck the faith.”

The rant was long, your eyes red rimmed and puffy from crying, his eyes dark with desire and love. It was quite the confession, more than he’d ever given Elia, more than he’d give anyone.

“You will stay home, here with me…until we can wed…and we will wed” his words were sharp, heavy and undeniable. His body trembling now as he watched you gape like a fish before bringing his hand back up quickly pushing a thumb into your mouth and apologizing, his hips thrusting and watched your eyes widen when he pushed into you.

An involuntary moan left from around his thumb and you had felt the need to throw up, body pulsing around him as his free hand pulled your leg up and around his hip, letting himself lay over you fully. “Fuck…fuck I’ve dreamed— you are so much more than anything I’ve dreamed.. feel so good…so tight”

“Your body loves it…craves me, made for me. You’re sucking me in sweetling” he groaned and moved slowly, watching you wince and push at his chest, his finger pushing further into your mouth, letting you to choke a second before removing it and sucking it clean.

The fight in you had died when he started thrusting, hands falling from his body to grip the sheets with white knuckles and tears streaming as he kissed and nipped your neck.

“I love you…only you, from today and the rest of our lives.” Confessions left his lips left and right, his body thrumming against yours as heat coiled and moans lefts between the two of you.

The room was full of sobs from you, mixed with moans from the both of you. “Touch me sister…please, you are all I ever wanted—” his words were whispered and pleading as he felt around for your hand, tugging it from the sheets and tossing it over his shoulder, where you gripped involuntarily, fingernails digging into his perfect skin. “Fuck— yes…mark me, I’m yours”

Rhaegar was a panting mess on top of you, moaning when you tried to cause him pain. Your nails raked from his shoulder down his back and he seemed to love every second, when you bit down on his shoulder, his body shuddered on top of you, his movements faltering as he held himself deep inside your cunt.

“Again, bite me.. kick me, scream…claw me, punch me… I am yours. Hurt me if you wish, I will love you endlessly.” He was crying….actually crying. Tears slipping onto your face as he hovered over you.

Your breathing was labored, the crying and pleasure taking its toll. His words caught you off guard, you hated him…wanted to hurt him for how he was hurting you…but then his hand took yours and guided it onto his cheek. “I love you—” his whisper was cut short as your hand slapped across his face.

“Hit me as much as you want sweet love, just don’t leave…” he groaned and let his hand touch his stinging cheek before moving to wipe your tears again. “Don’t ever leave me— you can’t leave me, I’ll lock you in this fucking room—”

“You’re sick—” you had screamed as loud as you could and went to slap him again, only for your hand to fall the second his hips started moving again. The thrusts harder than before, faster.

Rhaella trembled, the kisses Rhaegar left at the funeral, how touchy he was…how pushy…she had feared for her sweet daughter. Moving down the hall before she could think. Her daughter’s room…her baby.. the sounds.. the voice.. the guards at the door…she couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

“Aerys—” a quiet whisper leaving her chapped lips as she stumbled down the hall, not towards her daughter’s room but away.

Arthur had seen the dowager queen, the look on her face across the hall, but he turned the other way, ignored the sounds in the room…Rhaegar was his king…a friend…he did no wrong…the king cannot be wrong.

“You love me, we’re bonded you and I, the same blood…parts of each other. Sick for one another…” Rhaegar groaned inside the room. He had buried his face into the soft skin at your neck, a hand creeping into your hair as his weight pushing you into the sheets, hips thrusting relentlessly.

“I don’t— no!” You whined and squeezed your eyes shut, tears were useless, kept blocking your vision, every plea to stop seemed to encourage him, your body giving up as your breathing quickened, his hips stuttering as he mumbled praises into your ear…in one ear and out the other, for you had tried to tune him out, the touch, his voice…the coil building that was about to burst.

“I love you…I’ve always loved you—” he was a mess, his own tears drying on his cheeks as yours still flowed, his hands now gripping your hips as he sat up a little and whimpered. “Father tried to.. destroy us… so I killed him…I’d do anything for you…”

His words made your eyes snap open only to squeeze closed again the second you felt his seed spill inside of you, his moan pathetically matching yours.

He was a whimpering mess, hands roaming your body as his full weight settled down on top of you while you sniffled trying to find your voice. “t-truly…you— you killed…father?”

He was lazily nuzzling your neck, still sheathed inside you refusing to part and a tired “hm?” Left his lips as he kissed the soft skin on your neck. “Yes…it felt so good. Fucking monster he was… always hurting mother, trying to force us apart…I did it for us my love.”

Your heart shattered. You thought he died from his own madness. Never thought Rhaegar capable, he was your older brother, a loved figure in your life before this sick love he gained for you. Your father did nothing but try to help you, save you from your own brother at your plea and he had died for it.

“I didn’t want— father was not forcing us apart.” Your voice faltered, quiet…scared and he kissed your neck one more time before kissing up to your lips, kissing the plumpness before sighing against them, refusing to pull himself away as he pecked them over and over. “You are so sweet…father was such a monster and you defend him, you need not… he is out of our lives forever.”

You were scared. Rhaegar had murdered his own father, your father… who else would he hurt simply because you didn’t love him. Your thoughts swirled, barrier breaking, you were trembling…broken. When his lips came down to kiss you again, he smiled at feeling you kiss back, your hand snaking up to caress his cheek making him shudder.

“We are going to be so happy together sweet girl”

“I suppose…we will be”

[witchthewriter]

𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒃𝒐𝒓𝒏 𝑺𝒐𝒏, 𝑨𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒂𝒓𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒚𝒆𝒏, 𝒓𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝑪𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒙𝒆𝒔.

[thinkerbluerose]

— They say Prince Rhaegar plucked a ruby from his own heart and set it in the heart of his star...

Rhaegar by Cj_KhalifP

[mochifuyu]

Another fanart for @syndrossi 's au

Was practicing a pose, and then drew Rhaella (f!Rhaegar) and then everything. My back hurts ಥ_ಥ. I tried to test out new things, also add a few details, from jewelry, gold and the dress, which I actually got inspired from TikTok. I do think Rhaella is pretty happy with how she's grown up now (by her dress), can't a princess show off her bosoms U-U? Hope I captured her beauty even more

All the AUs are so good, it's making me color my art more nowadays, I might hopefully make some more doodles since I've recently read chapter 10 from resonant. One day I'll draw Jon fully or maybe Daemon, men are hard to draw orz. Here's the sketch since I was quite happy with the pose