clark loves petting your hair or giving it a gentle tug either to reel you back in or to give a warning if you’re in public or in front of other people
like when you laughed at steve lombards stupid joke he would move hair from your face and find the back of your head which to others is sweet and romantic but he tugs it with those strong hands of his
likes to hear you beg, really beg. won’t make you come until you’re practically drooling and crying “cmon.. ask better than that” while he brings his palm against your cheek and gives it a sharp *smack*
he calls himself daddy once as a joke. “yeah, that’s what daddy likes to hear” when you told him about your new promotion
comment or lmk if you want more of this Clark <333
office baddie! reader x clark kent x lois lane (they aren’t dating just their situationship) tw; love triangle? pretty privilege, ooc everyone lowkey, reader implied younger, cheating sorta
y/n. the name she didn't think twice about before she saw it
you were just supposed to be an intern a passing young hopeful who would fold under the pressure of the hustle and bustle and the demanding spirit of perry white but no... you persisted. it wasn't as if she was praying on your demise hell she didn't even know you.
you were just the girl who answered phones and handed people warm coffee. the girl that scrolled on social media on company time. she thought you were beautiful and that gets people far in a shallow city like metropolis she didn't see you as any type of threat.....
until that week perry gets rid of the deadweight that was the interns but there you were jumpy as the sleaze that was steve lombard carried boxes to an empty desk near clarks. apparently perry hired you on the spot because some pictures of you in the background of jimmy's pictures from the mayors ball went viral and the illiterate dude bros of metropolis wanted to see more of you. journalism was dead.
perry had you reading the weather reports and sometimes going out with a small crew whenever a superman fight was happening in the city. you got the engagement and the views but you didn't affect her whatso ever until she saw it
clark looking up from his computer when your voice blared through the speakers connected to the bullpen tvs. she saw him smile when you messed up your line fed to you by a teleprompter. she noticed how guilty he looked when he quickly looked down back at his computer. she and clark never made anything official-- she was the one that kept things casual. she was the one that pushed him further away by flinching away from the commitment he had wanted. she couldn't help it she was a self sabotager she didn't want him to get too close
and now he was smiling at you that girl who would put too much milk not enough sugar in her coffee the girl whose entire career depended on her face. she felt a pang in her chest. she tried not to think anything of it. on sunday when she texted clark as she always did for a cheeky hookup he blew her off... clark kent the man who she couldn't get to leave her alone was busy. she knew it was bullshit. on monday morning you were at your desk typing away and laughing with whoever you were talking to on the phone, she saw clark staring at you like you were prime rib. his eyes gleamed that way they used to for her. she never even seen him interact with you, you didn't really talk to anyone who wasn't pointing a phone or a camera at you.
tuesday when they ate lunch together he didn't really talk and clark kent was chatty-- he made stupid excuses as to why he couldn't hang out. she watched you that wednesday toying with the top of your energy drink just tapping it with your acrylic nails to make it worse she saw clark nearly trip to go to your desk offering to open the can. his stupidly handsome smile that reaches those baby blues on full display for you. 'such a sweetie' you smiled laughing handing him the can and she saw him open the can almost like he was restraining himself from busting it open. he swallowed a groan when you took a sip and licked the corner of your lips. when you thanked him his ears tinted pink.
the whole week was torture for her, just forcing herself to stop watching him fawn over you and you slowly spoon feeding him mindless attention like a wave in the morning or a kissy face as you said 'bye bye ck' when you clocked out an hour early. no matter how much it bothered her she would not tell him or let it be known in subtle ways or by sharing music on her profile.. she was a grown woman this wasn't high school. she'd tough up and then put on her playlist in the privacy of her own apartment. she looked you up just scrolling trying to find something. she didn't exactly know what.
@/reallyy/n_dailyplanet: this just in.... hehe (a photo of you with the ceo of stagg enterprises) outfit: gifted #miumiu
maybe she would message you. just a friendly hey girly stay away from my man text but she had more pride than that. she was BETTER than that. well maybe just a friendly nudge wouldn’t hurt….
walking in the tall grass of the his Ma and Pas farm barefoot and waddling while 6 months pregnant with baby number 2 while bringing him a glass of lemonade while he fixes a fence
Aerion Targaryen x wife!reader - A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Summary: Dunk accidently mistakes Aerion's lady wife in his tent for a common whore because she did not arrive with the rest of the Targaryen party to the Ashford tourney. This is a oneshot, not related to any series.
Warnings: SMUT 18+ p in v, unprotected sex, possessiveness, power imbalance, dubiously consensual situations, Aerion wants to roleplay, pregnancy mention, talks about killing, Aerion has insane ideas, breeding.
The morning of the tourney had dawned bright over Ashford Meadow, the kind of morning that promised glory and broke that promise before the sun reached its zenith. You had watched the Targaryen party arrive from the shade of the pavilion, your hands folded, your spine a straight line of practiced composure. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen, red on black, snapped in the wind, a sight that still made your stomach tighten.
Dunk, Ser Duncan, now, though it sat awkwardly on his broad shoulders, stood near the lists with his squire, a small, shaven-headed boy with sharp eyes. The hedge knight watched the procession with a wariness that bordered on rude, his great height making him impossible to miss among the crowd of lords and ladies and smallfolk alike. He had heard the whispers, same as everyone else. Prince Aerion Targaryen was coming to Ashford. Prince Aerion Brightflame, they called him. Some called him other things, though not to his face. This one, he had heard, was cut from different cloth entirely.
The prince was fair to look upon, all the Targaryens were, with hair like spun silver and eyes the color of violets, a sharp jaw and a mouth that seemed perpetually on the verge of a sneer or a smile, and it was difficult to tell which was which. He wore black riding leathers chased with silver thread, a cloak of deep crimson slung over one shoulder, and he did not look at the smallfolk who gathered to gawk. He looked through them, as if they were made of glass and of no consequence.
Duncan watched him dismount with an easy grace, handing his reins to a squire without a word of thanks. The prince stretched, rolled his shoulders, and cast a lazy glance across the meadow toward the rows of tents and pavilions that had sprouted like colorful mushrooms overnight.
“I am for my tent,” Aerion announced to no one in particular, though his voice carried well enough. It was a pleasant voice, cultured and smooth, with an undercurrent of something that made the hairs on Duncan’s arm prickle. “Tell them to bring wine. Something red, from the Arbor, if they have it. None of that Dornish swill.” He paused, and a slow, private smile curved his lips. “I, myself, shall be finding a pretty woman to share it with.”
Chuckles followed. A couple of Kingsguards shared a knowing look. Duncan frowned. He had heard, somewhere in the jumble of heraldry and gossip that accompanied any great tourney, that prince Aerion was married. To some lady of a lesser house, a match that had raised eyebrows among the high lords but had been pushed through by the prince’s father, Maekar, for reasons Duncan did not pretend to understand. A wife. And here the prince was, speaking of finding a pretty woman as if he were a knight with nothing but a horse and a sword to his name. Duncan’s sense of honour, simple and stubborn as an ox, bristled at the casual dismissal. A man wed was a man wed. He ought not speak so.
But Duncan was no fool, not entirely. He kept his frown to himself and watched the silver-haired prince stride off toward the largest of the black-and-crimson pavilions, his cloak billowing behind him, and he thought, not for the first time, that the blood of the dragon was a strange and unsettling thing.
You heard the commotion before you saw him. The Targaryen encampment was a hive of activity, servants hurrying with trunks and tapestries, grooms leading horses to the picket lines, guards taking up their posts. You had arrived a day earlier, traveling with your family, separately from your husband despite his insistence. The roads are dusty, he himself had said, after all, with that faint curl of his lip that might have been concern or might have been disdain. You will arrive fresh and rested. I will not have my wife looking like a Dothraki crone at her first great tourney. So you had come ahead with a small retinue, and you had waited.
Now he was here.
You remained in your chair within the pavilion, a book open on your lap that you had not read a single word of in the past hour. Your heart was beating too fast, a traitorous thing that had never learned to be calm around him. It was not fear, not precisely. It was something more complicated, something that knotted in your belly and made your breath come shorter and your skin feel too warm.
You heard his voice outside, giving orders, and then the flap of the pavilion was thrown back and he stepped inside, bringing with him the smell of horse and leather and something else, something that was just him.
“Wine,” he said to the air, not looking at you. He shrugged off his cloak and tossed it over a chest. “I told them to bring wine. If it is not here by the time I have removed my boots, I will have someone flogged.”
You said nothing. You watched him sit on the edge of the camp bed and work at his boots, his long fingers deft on the buckles. His silver hair fell forward. He was beautiful. You had thought so the first time you saw him, standing in your father’s hall with that faint, mocking smile and those impossible violet eyes, and you thought so now, even knowing what lay beneath the beauty. Perhaps because of what lay beneath it. You had never been able to untangle that knot.
A servant appeared, breathless, bearing a silver tray with a flagon of wine and two goblets. Aerion waved a hand dismissively. “Leave it. Go.”
The servant went. Aerion poured himself a goblet of deep red wine, swirled it, inhaled, and took a long drink. Only then did he seem to notice you, though you knew he had been aware of you from the moment he stepped into the tent. He was always aware of you. It was one of the things that made him so unsettling.
His violet eyes traveled over you slowly, from the crown of your head to the tips of your slippers, and you felt the weight of that gaze like a physical touch. You wore a gown of pale blue silk, cut low enough to be pleasing but not so low as to be vulgar, your hair dressed simply but becomingly. You were not a great beauty, you knew. You were pretty enough, with good skin and kind eyes and a mouth that smiled easily, but you were no silver-haired Targaryen princess. You were just you. And he was Aerion Brightflame.
“Well,” he drawled, setting down his goblet. His smile curved slowly, lazily, like a cat stretching in the sun. “How very fortunate. A pretty wench has finally found her way to my tent.”
Your spine stiffened. Your hands tightened on the book in your lap. “Aerion.”
“I wonder,” he continued, as if you had not spoken, “what brings you here. Looking to earn some silver for your services, perhaps?” He leaned back on his hands, his legs spread slightly, his entire posture one of indolent amusement. “I am told I am generous. When the service pleases me.”
Heat flooded your cheeks. It was anger, you told yourself. Only anger. Not the other thing, the thing that made your thighs press together beneath your skirts. “You are my husband.”
“Am I?” He tilted his head, feigning surprise. “I had forgotten. You must remind me. Wives and whores are so easily confused, are they not? Both warm. Both willing.” His smile sharpened. “Both so very eager to please their prince.”
You rose from your chair, the book sliding forgotten to the cushion. “If you wish to play games, Aerion, find someone else. I am not in the mood.”
“Oh, but you are.” His voice dropped, losing some of its mocking edge and gaining something darker, something that vibrated in the air between you. “You are always in the mood for me. I can see it in your eyes. I can smell it on your skin.” He inhaled deeply, theatrically, his nostrils flaring. “Like honey. Like summer. Come here.”
Your feet carried you forward before your mind could catch up. You hated that. You hated how easily he commanded your body, how your legs moved to his voice as if pulled by strings. You stopped a few feet from him, close enough to see the small scar on his jaw from some childhood mishap, the way his pupils had swallowed the violet of his irises.
“I am your wife,” you said again, quieter this time.
“Yes.” He reached out and caught your wrist, his grip warm and firm but not painful. He tugged, gently, and you stumbled forward until you were standing between his spread knees. “You are. And yet here you are, in my tent, dressed unbefitting your station, looking at me with those eyes. What is a prince to think?”
He released your wrist and patted his thigh. The gesture was casual, but his eyes were fixed on your face with an intensity that made your breath catch. “Come. Sit. Show me what a pretty wench does when she wants to earn her silver.”
You hesitated. The game was cruel, you knew. It was like him, to push and push until you did not know whether you wanted to slap him or kiss him, until the lines between anger and desire blurred into something indistinguishable. But beneath the cruelty, beneath the mockery, there was something else. You had learned to see it, over two years of marriage. A flicker in his eyes, a slight softening around his mouth. He wanted this game, yes, but he wanted you. He wanted you to play it with him, to meet him in this strange space he had created, where you were both more and less than husband and wife.
You lowered yourself onto his lap.
His hands came up immediately, settling on your hips, fingers pressing into the silk of your gown. “There,” he murmured, his breath warm against your throat. “That was not so difficult, was it?”
“I am not a whore,” you said, your voice steadier than you felt.
“No,” he agreed, and his lips brushed the curve of your jaw, feather-light. “You are not. A whore would know what to do. A whore would have her hands in my hair by now, or her fingers on my laces. A whore would be rocking against me, seeking her own pleasure as much as mine.” His teeth grazed your earlobe. “You, my sweet wife, are sitting on my lap like a startled doe. It is charming. It is also, I confess, somewhat frustrating.”
You turned your head and met his eyes. They were so close, those violet eyes, and they were laughing at you. But there was warmth there too, a heat that had nothing to do with mockery. “Then teach me.”
Something shifted in his expression. The lazy amusement remained, but beneath it something kindled, something hungry and intent. “Oh,” he breathed. “I intend to.”
His hands slid from your hips to the laces of your gown. He did not fumble, did not hesitate. His fingers worked the knots with practiced ease, loosening the silk until the bodice gaped and cool air kissed your skin. You shivered, and his smile widened.
“First,” he said, his voice a low murmur against your collarbone, “a whore does not sit still and wait to be undressed. She participates. She wants the business concluded quickly, so she may move on to the next customer. She is efficient.” He tugged the gown down over your shoulders, baring your breasts to the warm air of the tent. “She does not blush like a maiden on her wedding night.”
You could feel the heat spreading down your chest. But you lifted your hands and began to work at the laces of his tunic, your fingers less deft than his, trembling slightly. He let you struggle for a moment, watching your face with those intense violet eyes, before he covered your hands with his own and guided them.
“Like this,” he said, and his voice had gone rough at the edges. “Slowly. There is no rush. The customer will pay for your time regardless.”
“You are the customer,” you pointed out, your voice breathless.
“I am.” He shrugged out of his tunic, letting it fall to the floor of the tent. His chest was lean and pale, dusted with fine silver hair, the muscles shifting beneath his skin as he moved. “And I am a generous man. I will pay for every moment.”
His hands found your breasts, cupping them, thumbs brushing over your nipples until they tightened into hard peaks. You gasped, your hips jerking forward instinctively, and he laughed, a low, pleased sound.
“There,” he said. “Now you are beginning to understand. A whore knows her own pleasure. She takes it where she finds it, because the night is long and there are many customers. She does not wait for permission.”
He shifted beneath you, and you felt the hard length of him pressing against your thigh through his breeches. Your breath caught. You rocked against him, experimental, and his eyes fluttered half-closed.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Like that.”
His hands slid down your body, gathering your skirts, pushing them up until they bunched around your waist. The air was cool on your bare thighs, and you shivered again, but it was not from cold. His fingers found the waist of your smallclothes and tugged, and you lifted your hips to help him, your body moving without conscious thought now, driven by a need that had been building since the moment he stepped into the tent.
“Now,” he said, his voice a dark purr, “you will take what you want. I am merely a customer. A paying customer. Do you understand?”
You did not understand, not entirely, but you nodded anyway. His hands settled on your hips again, guiding you, positioning you. You felt the blunt head of him pressing against your entrance, and you were slick and ready, your body traitorously eager. You sank down onto him, taking him inside you in one slow motion, and the sound he made, a low, guttural groan that seemed torn from somewhere deep in his chest, made your inner muscles clench around him.
“Gods,” he muttered. His head fell back, his throat exposed. “You are...you are...”
You did not let him finish. You began to move, rocking on his lap as he had instructed, finding a rhythm that made pleasure spark up your spine. His hands tightened on your hips, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, but you did not care. You were watching his face, watching the way his composure cracked and crumbled, watching the mocking prince dissolve into something rawer, something more honest.
“Look at you,” he said, his voice strained. “My pretty little whore. Taking what she wants. Riding me like a...like a...”
His words broke off into a groan as you shifted your angle, finding a spot that made you both gasp. You braced your hands on his shoulders, your fingers digging into the pale skin, and moved faster. The tent was warm, filled with the scent of wine and sex and the faint sweetness that always clung to him. Outside, you could hear the distant sounds of the tourney grounds, horses, voices, the clash of practice swords, but they seemed very far away, from another world entirely.
He was watching you now, his violet eyes wide and dark, his lips parted. The mockery was gone. The game was forgotten. There was only this, the slide of your bodies together, the wet sounds of your joining, the way his hips bucked up to meet your downward strokes.
You leaned forward and kissed him. He kissed you back with equal ferocity, one hand leaving your hip to tangle in your hair, holding you close as his tongue swept into your mouth.
When you broke apart, gasping, he pressed his forehead to yours. His eyes were squeezed shut, his brow furrowed as if in pain. “I cannot...you are too...I need...”
You did not know what he needed. You were too far gone yourself, the pleasure building and building like a wave preparing to crash. Your rhythm faltered, became erratic, and you buried your face in the curve of his neck, breathing in the scent of him.
His arms came around you, crushing you against his chest. One hand splayed across your bare back, holding you close, while the other gripped your hip, guiding your movements. His mouth found your shoulder, and he kissed the skin there.
You shattered. The pleasure broke over you in waves, making you cry out against his throat, your body clenching around him rhythmically. He followed a moment later, his hips jerking up into you, a low groan tearing from his lips as he spilled inside you.
But Aerion, being Aerion, did not let up.
His grip on your hips tightened before you could catch your breath, holding you firmly in place atop him. You were still trembling, still gasping, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, when his voice came again: that same lazy, mocking drawl, as if nothing at all had happened between you.
"What a pretty girl you are," he murmured against your hair, and you could feel his lips curve into a smile. "So eager. So willing. If you please me well enough, I may take you back to Summerhall as my paramour."
You stiffened in his arms. He was still playing the game. Even now, with his seed still warm inside you, with your bodies still joined, he could not simply be your husband. He had to be this: this infuriating, impossible creature who needed to twist everything into something strange and sharp.
"Aerion..." you started, but he cut you off, his hand sliding up your spine to cup the back of your neck.
"I'll even put a babe in you," he continued. His other hand pressed against your lower belly, where his seed was taking root, if the gods willed it. "I would wager you would give me a beautiful child. Silver hair, violet eyes. A true dragon." His thumb traced a slow circle on your stomach. "A son. You would like that, would you not? To give a prince a son?"
Your breath caught. The words were part of the game, they had to be, but there was something in his voice, some thread of genuine yearning, that made your heart clench. He wanted a son. He had always wanted a son. It was the reason he had married you, or so he claimed. A wife to give him heirs. A warm body to fill with dragon seed. Nothing more.
But his hands on you were gentle now, even as his words remained cruel.
"You are so soft," he breathed, his lips brushing your temple. "So supple. I would wager you make good coin at tourneys. Rotating through tents, spreading your legs for any knight with silver in his purse." His hips shifted beneath you, a small, lazy movement that made you gasp. "But I would keep you for myself. I am a jealous man. I do not share what is mine."
You pulled back enough to look at his face. His violet eyes were half-lidded, his lips curved in that familiar mocking smile, but there was a tension around his jaw, a tightness that betrayed him. He was waiting for something. Waiting to see if you would play along, or if you would break the game and demand he be your husband instead of this strange, cruel stranger he pretended to be.
"A prince's paramour," you said slowly, finding your voice. "That is a generous offer. But I have heard the prince of Summerhall already has a wife."
Something flickered in his eyes. Satisfaction, perhaps. Or something softer.
"His wife," Aerion said, and his voice changed, the mockery falling away like a cloak dropped to the floor, "is a vexing creature who does not know her place."
There it was. The shift. You were his wife again, and he was your husband, and the game was over. Or so you thought.
"She came to Ashford days ago," he continued, and now there was a genuine edge to his voice, a sharpness that had nothing to do with play. "With her own house. Her own retinue. As if she were not a Targaryen. As if she were not mine."
You opened your mouth to protest, but he was not finished.
"I arrived today and found my wife already ensconced in my pavilion, wearing a gown of pale blue silk that any merchant's daughter might own." His fingers plucked at the fabric pooled around your waist, his lip curling. "Plain. Unadorned. No jewels. No finery. As if I had not bought her a dozen gowns finer than this. As if I had not given her rubies and sapphires and pearls enough to drown a lesser woman."
"I thought..."
"You thought wrong." His hand came up to cup your face, his thumb tracing your lower lip. His touch was gentle, but his eyes were hard. "You are a Targaryen now. My wife. When we travel, you travel with me. Not ahead, not behind, not separately. With me. At my side. Where you belong."
"I did not want to slow you down," you said quietly. "You said the roads were dusty. You said..."
"I said many things." He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of your mouth, brief and fierce. "I am your husband. It is my right to complain about dusty roads while you ride beside me. It is my right to be irritated by your presence and comforted by it in equal measure. You do not get to escape me so easily."
You stared at him, your heart beating too fast. He was impossible. He was infuriating. He was looking at you with those violet eyes, and beneath the irritation, beneath the princely arrogance, there was something that looked almost like hurt.
"You were lonely," you realized aloud. "You arrived and I was not with you, and you were lonely."
His jaw tightened. "I was bored. There is a difference."
"Is there?"
His hand slid from your face to your throat, not squeezing, just resting there, a reminder of his strength, of the power he held over you. "Do not presume to know my mind, wife."
But you did know. Marriage had taught you to read him, to see past the barbs and the mockery to the man beneath. A man who did not know how to say I missed you without wrapping it in thorns. A man who had been raised to believe that wanting someone was a weakness, and so he pretended he wanted no one at all.
"And this gown," he continued, his thumb stroking the column of your throat. "You will not wear it again. Not in public. I have bought you silks and velvets. I have given you the jewels to wear. You will wear them. All of them. At once, if you must. I will not have the realm whispering that prince Aerion cannot care for his wife."
"No one would think that," you said.
"They would." His voice dropped, and for a moment, the mask slipped entirely. "And what if someone had seen you, dressed like this? What if some knight or lord had mistaken you for a common wench, a camp follower, and dragged you to his tent?" His grip on your throat tightened fractionally. "What would I have done then? Burned the entire tourney to ash? Killed every man who looked at you? You are mine, and you walk about looking like anyone might have you, and I cannot..."
He stopped. His breath was coming faster, his chest rising and falling beneath your hands. His eyes were wide, wild, and you realized with a start that he was genuinely afraid. Not of losing you to another man, Aerion Targaryen feared very little, but of the rage that would consume him if anyone tried. Of what he might do.
"Aerion," you said softly. You lifted your hand and touched his face, your fingers tracing the sharp line of his jaw. "I am sorry. I did not think."
"No," he agreed, but some of the tension bled out of him. "You did not."
He turned his face into your palm and pressed a kiss there, his lips warm and surprisingly soft. Then he kissed your wrist, the inside of your elbow, the curve of your shoulder. His hands slid down your body, over your ribs, your waist, settling once more on your hips.
"I will wear the gowns," you promised, your voice breathless as his mouth found the hollow of your throat. "And the jewels. All of them. I will look like a Targaryen princess."
"You are a Targaryen princess." His teeth grazed your collarbone. "My princess. My wife."
"And I will ride with you," you continued, your fingers tangling in his silver hair. "Always. I will not go ahead again."
"See that you do not." He lifted his head and looked at you, and the mockery was gone from his eyes, replaced by something fiercer and far more dangerous. "I will not be parted from you again. I find I do not care for it."
Before you could answer, his hands tightened on your hips and he guided you into motion again. You gasped, your body still sensitive from your first release, but he did not stop. He moved you slowly, rocking you against him in a rhythm that made pleasure spark up your spine all over again.
"Aerion," you managed, your voice unsteady. "I am...your breeches...I am drenching them..."
"Let them be drenched." His voice was rough, his breath coming in short pants against your throat. "I have other breeches. I have a hundred breeches. I will ruin them all if I must."
You could not argue. You could barely think. He was moving you faster now, his hips rising to meet yours, and the wet sounds of your joining filled the tent. His hands roamed your body: your breasts, your waist, the curve of your backside, touching you everywhere, as if he could not get enough of the feel of you.
"You are prettier than any wench," he panted, the words tumbling from his lips like a confession. "Prettier than any woman I have ever seen. My pretty wife. My sweet wife. You are always so...so warm...so perfect for me..."
His words dissolved into a groan as you clenched around him, your own pleasure building again. You buried your face in his neck and let him move you, let him take what he needed, because you needed it too. You needed this: this fierce, consuming thing between you, this fire that burned away all pretense and left only the raw truth of your wanting.
"I am going to..." he started, but he did not finish. His body arched beneath you, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to bruise, and he spilled inside you with a broken cry. The sensation pushed you over the edge after him, your body milking him greedily, drawing out every last drop of his seed.
For a long moment, you simply breathed together, your bodies still joined, your hearts pounding in tandem. You expected him to release you, to let you slide off his lap and find your feet. Instead, his arms tightened around you, holding you in place.
"Aerion," you said, shifting slightly. "I should..."
"No." His voice was firm, though still roughened with pleasure. "Stay."
"But I am..."
"Stay." His hand pressed against your lower back, keeping you flush against his chest. "I like you here. Warm and soft and full of me. You will stay until I say you may move."
You squirmed, and his grip tightened. A small, cruel smile curved his lips, the first hint of the old Aerion, the one who liked to push and test and see how far you would go for him.
"Uncomfortable, my love?" he asked, his voice a lazy drawl once more. "Good. Think of it as penance. For leaving me to ride alone. For wearing that plain little gown. For making me worry."
"I did not know you worried."
"I did not know either." He said it lightly, but there was something raw beneath the words. "It was a most unpleasant discovery. I do not recommend it."
He leaned back on the camp bed, pulling you with him, so that you were sprawled across his chest. His hands roamed your back in slow, idle strokes, tracing the curve of your spine, the dip of your waist. His eyes were half-closed, his expression one of sated contentment, but there was an expectation in the set of his mouth, a silent demand.
You leaned down and pressed your lips to his throat, just below his jaw, where his pulse beat slow and strong. He made a small sound, not quite a sigh, not quite a groan, and tilted his head back, offering you more of his neck. You kissed your way along the elegant line of his throat, feeling the vibration of his hum of approval against your lips.
"That is better," he murmured, his fingers tangling in your hair. "My sweet wife. My dutiful wife."
You dragged your tongue along his skin, tasting salt and the faint sweetness that always clung to him. He shivered, and you felt a surge of power. He might command you, might order you about and mock you and play his cruel games, but here, in this, you had power too. You could make him shiver.
You kissed his jaw, the corner of his mouth, the high curve of his cheekbone. His eyes had fallen fully closed now, his lips parted, his breathing slow and deep. He looked almost peaceful. Almost gentle. You knew better than to believe it entirely, Aerion Targaryen was never entirely peaceful, never entirely gentle, but in these moments, after he had spent himself inside you, when your body was still wrapped around his, he came close.
He smiled, a real smile, not the mocking curve he showed the world, and pulled you down for a kiss. It was slow and deep and thorough, his tongue sliding against yours, his hand cradling the back of your head as if you were something precious.
When he finally released you, his eyes had sharpened again, a new hunger kindling in their violet depths.
"Now," he said, and his voice was a dark promise. "Let us see how sturdy this makeshift bed truly is."
Before you could respond, he rolled, taking you with him, and suddenly you were on your back on the camp bed, staring up at him. His silver hair fell around his face like a curtain, his eyes burning down at you, his body still joined with yours.
"Aerion..."
"Quiet," he said, but there was no cruelty in it. Only want. Only need. "You owe me. For the lonely ride. For the plain gown. For every moment I spent wondering where you were and whether you were safe."
He began to move, slow and deep, and you forgot how to speak.
The bed creaked beneath you, a rhythmic sound that matched the thrust of his hips. He braced himself on his forearms, his face inches from yours, his eyes never leaving your face. He watched every flicker of pleasure that crossed your features, every gasp, every moan, as if he were memorizing them.
You reached up and pulled him down for a kiss, and he groaned into your mouth. His rhythm faltered, became more urgent, and you wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.
The bed creaked louder. Neither of you cared.
"Give me a son," he gasped against your lips. "Give me a son, and I will give you anything. Everything. Just...give me..."
The bed gave way with a splintering crack that echoed through the tent like a thunderclap.
One moment you were beneath him, your back pressed into the thin mattress, your legs wrapped around his waist as he drove into you with that single-minded intensity that only Aerion Targaryen possessed. The next, the wooden frame splintered and collapsed, sending you both tumbling to the ground in a tangle of limbs and furs and broken slats.
You gasped, more from surprise than pain, your hands flying to grip his shoulders. Aerion barely paused. He grunted as the bed gave way beneath him, catching himself on his forearms before he could crush you, and then he kept moving.
"Aerion," you managed, your voice breathless and startled. "The bed..."
"I noticed." His voice was strained, his hips never slowing their relentless rhythm. The furs beneath you provided some cushion against the hard ground, but you could feel the broken slats of the bed frame pressing into your back through the layers. He shifted, adjusting his angle, and a broken moan escaped your lips.
"You are..." you started, but the words dissolved into a gasp as he hit that spot deep inside you, the one that made your vision blur.
"I am what?" His voice was a dark purr, his violet eyes gleaming down at you in the dim light of the tent. Sweat gleamed on his brow, and his silver hair hung in disheveled strands around his face. He looked wild. He looked beautiful. He looked like a dragon in human form, all fire and hunger and terrible grace. "I am your husband. I am a prince. And I am not going to let a poorly constructed camp bed prevent me from taking what is mine."
Your laughter surprised you, a breathless, slightly hysterical sound that bubbled up from somewhere deep in your chest. "The bed is in splinters."
"Then I will have lord Ashford pay for a new one." His hips snapped forward, hard and deep, and your laughter turned into a moan. "He should have provided sturdier accommodations for a prince of the realm. It is his own fault if his furniture cannot withstand proper use."
Proper use. As if this was proper. As if anything about Aerion Targaryen could ever be called proper.
Aerion did not slow. If anything, he seemed to find new vigor in the destruction, his pace increasing until you were gasping and clutching at his shoulders, your nails leaving crescents in his pale skin.
"That is it," he breathed, his forehead dropping to yours. His eyes were squeezed shut, his brow furrowed in concentration. "That is...yes...you feel..."
He did not finish the thought. His rhythm stuttered, became erratic, and then he was spilling inside you. You cried out, your back arching off the furs, your body clenching around him as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through you.
You lay there, tangled together on the ruined bed, your chests heaving, your bodies still joined. Aerion's weight pressed you into the furs, and you could feel the hard edges of broken wood beneath you, but you could not bring yourself to care.
Finally, he stirred. He lifted his head and looked down at you, and there was something soft in his violet eyes, something that only ever appeared in these private moments, when the mask slipped and the real Aerion peered through.
He pulled out of you slowly, and you winced at the loss, at the sudden emptiness. But before you could mourn it, he was moving down your body, pressing kisses to your skin as he went. Your throat. Your collarbone. The valley between your breasts. Your ribs. And then, when he reached your belly, he stopped.
His hands framed your hips, his thumbs tracing slow circles on the soft skin there. He pressed his lips to the curve of your stomach, just below your navel, the place where, if the gods were kind, a child might one day grow.
"This," he murmured against your skin, "will surely have a babe put in your body."
Your breath caught. You lifted your head to look at him, at the silver hair spilling across your stomach, at the reverence in his touch. He was not mocking now. There was no cruelty in his voice, no sharp edge of humor. Only want. Only hope.
"A son," he continued, his lips brushing your skin with each word. "A strong son. A dragon. I will fill you every night of this tourney, and every night after, until your belly swells with my child. Until the maesters confirm what I already know, that you were made for this. Made to carry my heirs."
Your hand found his hair, your fingers threading through the silver strands. He kissed your belly once more, lingering and soft, and then he lifted his head. His eyes met yours, and for a moment, you saw everything: the loneliness, the fear, the desperate need to prove himself, to leave a legacy, to be more than just a second son with a dangerous reputation. You saw the man beneath the prince, and your heart ached for him.
Then the moment passed. He sat up, stretching with the lazy grace of a cat, utterly unbothered by his nakedness or the wreckage surrounding him.
"We will sleep in lord Ashford's castle tonight anyway," he said, waving a dismissive hand at the ruined bed. "This was merely for the afternoon. A place to rest between the lists and the feast. It matters not if it is broken."
You looked at the splintered wood, the torn mattress, the furs scattered across the ground. "The servants will talk."
"Let them talk." He rose to his feet in one fluid motion, utterly unconcerned with his nakedness. His body was lean and pale, muscled in the way of a man who trained daily with sword and lance, and there was a fine sheen of sweat still glistening on his skin. He looked like something from a tapestry: a warrior, a prince, a creature of myth made flesh. "Let them whisper about the passion of prince Aerion and his lady wife. Let them wonder what we do behind closed tent flaps. I care not."
He found his breeches, miraculously intact, unlike the bed, and pulled them on. Then he turned back to you, still sprawled on the furs, and something flickered in his eyes.
"You should dress," he said. "I am going to find more wine. The servants here are incompetent, and I will not suffer dry throat because of their laziness."
He crossed to you, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to your lips, brief but thorough. Then his hand found your hip, and he pinched, just hard enough to make you yelp.
"That," he said, straightening with a smirk, "is for breaking the bed."
"I did not break the bed. You broke the bed."
"The bed broke because of your..." He gestured vaguely at your body, still disheveled from his attentions. "Your enthusiasm. Your movements. Your inability to lie still while your husband takes his pleasure."
You stared at him, incredulous. "You were the one..."
But he was already gone, sweeping out of the tent with the arrogance of a man who had never been forced to finish an argument he was losing.
You lay there for a moment longer, staring at the tent ceiling, your body still humming with the aftershocks of pleasure. Then, slowly, you sat up and began to put yourself to rights.
The gown was a lost cause, crumpled and stained and likely unwearable until it could be properly laundered. You found a simple shift in one of the trunks and pulled it on, then a robe of soft grey wool to ward off the afternoon chill. You combed your fingers through your tangled hair, doing your best to tame it without a proper brush, and splashed water on your face from the basin in the corner.
When you emerged from the tent, the afternoon sun was warm on your face. The tourney grounds sprawled before you, a sea of colorful pavilions and snapping banners, of knights and squires and smallfolk milling about. The sounds of the lists drifted on the breeze: the clash of practice swords, the shouts of men, the whinny of horses.
You found a camp chair just outside the tent flap and settled into it, careful not to stray far. Aerion's words echoed in your mind. You will not leave my side. You will stay where I can see you. You had promised, and you meant to keep that promise, even if he was not here to enforce it.
The sun was warm. The chair was comfortable. You let your eyes drift half-closed, your body still pleasantly sore from the afternoon's activities. A small, secret smile curved your lips.
Footsteps approached: heavy, hesitant footsteps, the tread of a man who was very large and trying very hard to be quiet. You opened your eyes and found yourself staring up at a veritable giant of a man.
He was tall, taller than any man you had ever seen, easily seven feet, with broad shoulders and thick arms and hands the size of dinner plates. His face was plain and honest, with a strong jaw and kind eyes and a thatch of unruly brown hair. He wore a simple tunic of green and brown, well-made but not fine, and he carried himself with the careful awkwardness of a man who had never quite grown accustomed to his own size.
He was also staring at you with an expression of profound discomfort.
"Begging your pardon, my lady," he said, and his voice was deep and rumbling, like distant thunder. "I did not mean to disturb you. I was looking for...that is, I was trying to find..."
He trailed off, his brow furrowing. He looked at the tent behind you, the black-and-crimson Targaryen pavilion, and then back at you, and something like confusion flickered across his honest face.
"You are the hedge knight," you said, because you had noticed him earlier. Everyone at Ashford had noticed him, if only for his size. He towered over every other man in the camp, a great shambling giant with a boy squire at his heels and a look of perpetual bewilderment on his plain, earnest face. "The tall one. I saw you near the lists this morning."
"I am," he confirmed, and he seemed surprised that you had noticed him at all. "Ser Duncan, if it pleases my lady. Though most call me Dunk." He hesitated. "I was looking for...there was a knight I knew once, Ser Arlan of Pennytree. I thought someone here might remember him. I have been asking at the tents, but I fear I have lost track of which ones I have visited and which I have not."
"I am sorry," you said gently. "I do not know the name."
His shoulders slumped, just slightly. "No one does. It has been many years. I thought perhaps...but it does not matter." He made to leave, then stopped, his brow furrowing again.
"My lady," he said slowly, "are you…are you well?"
You blinked. "I am perfectly well, Ser Duncan. Why do you ask?"
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, his big hands opening and closing at his sides. "It is only...I saw prince Aerion enter this tent some hours ago. And I heard him say...that is, I could not help but hear..."
"I am well," you said quickly. "Truly. There is no cause for concern."
But Ser Duncan was not a man who let things go easily. His honest face was troubled, his brow deeply furrowed. He took a half-step closer, lowering his voice as if afraid of being overheard.
"Was he...did he hurt you?" The words seemed to cost him something. His jaw was tight, his eyes earnest and worried. "The prince. I know his reputation. I know what they say about him. If he was too rough with you, if he forced you..."
"Ser Duncan." You held up a hand, stopping him. Understanding was dawning, slow and strange and almost amusing. He did not know you. Aerion had most likely said something vulgar, and then he had seen you - a woman in a plain gown, no jewels, no finery, enter that same tent. And he had drawn the obvious, if incorrect, conclusion.
He thought you were a whore. He thought you were a camp follower, a woman paid for her services, and he was concerned, genuinely, deeply concerned, that the prince had been cruel to you. That he had hurt you. That you might need help.
It was so earnest. So kind. So utterly, completely mistaken.
"The prince did not hurt me," you said, and you could not quite keep the amusement from your voice. "I assure you, Ser Duncan, I am quite unharmed."
He did not look convinced. "If you are afraid to speak, my lady, I understand. Princes are...they have power. They can do things. But I would not let him harm you further. I would..."
"Ser Duncan." You leaned forward slightly, your voice gentle. "What do you think I am doing here?"
He hesitated. His face flushed a deep, ruddy red. "I...that is...it is not my place to judge, my lady. A woman must do what she must to survive. I know that. I have known many good women who..." He stopped, clearly floundering. "I only meant that if the prince was cruel, if he did not pay you what you were owed, I would speak to him. I would make it right."
You stared at him for a long moment. Then, despite yourself, you laughed.
It was not a mocking laugh, you did not have it in you to mock this earnest, well-meaning giant of a man. It was a laugh of genuine, surprised delight. He thought you were a whore awaiting payment. He thought Aerion had used you and cast you aside. And he, a poor hedge knight with nothing but his honour and his size to his name, was offering to confront a prince of the realm on your behalf.
"You are a good man, Ser Duncan," you said, wiping your eyes. "Truly."
He looked confused, and faintly wounded. "I do not understand. If you are not...then why are you..."
Before you could answer, a familiar voice cut through the afternoon air like a blade.
"What is this?"
Aerion emerged from between two neighboring pavilions, a flagon of wine in one hand and two goblets in the other. His silver hair was still disheveled, his tunic only half-laced, and his violet eyes swept over the scene before him with a sharpness that belied his casual posture. He took in you, seated in your camp chair in your plain grey robe. He took in the enormous hedge knight looming over you, his big hands raised in an awkward, abortive gesture.
"I leave my wife alone for a handful of minutes," Aerion said, his voice soft and dangerous, "and I return to find some great lumbering stranger hovering over her like a vulture over carrion. Explain yourself."
Ser Duncan went pale. He took a hasty step back, nearly tripping over his own feet, and raised his hands higher in a gesture of surrender. "Your Grace, I meant no harm. I was only...I did not realize...that is, I thought she was..."
Your mind raced. You saw the path this conversation was about to take: the hedge knight's earnest confession, Aerion's cold fury at being thought the kind of man who would pay for a whore when he had a wife, the potential for humiliation and violence that would follow. Ser Duncan did not deserve that. He had been kind. He had been concerned. He had offered to help a woman he believed to be in need.
"He was lost," you said quickly, rising from your chair and stepping between the two men. You placed a hand on Aerion's chest, feeling the tension coiled in his muscles. "He was looking for a tent, someone he knew once, a Ser Arlan of Pennytree, and he lost his way. He stopped to ask me for directions. Nothing more."
Aerion's gaze flickered from the hedge knight to you. His eyes narrowed. "Directions."
"Yes." You kept your voice light, pleasant. "He is new to tourneys of this size, I think. The camp is a maze. Anyone might lose their way."
Ser Duncan, to his credit, was not a complete fool. He latched onto the lie with the desperate gratitude of a drowning man seizing a rope. "Yes," he said quickly. "Yes, that is it exactly. I was lost. I asked the lady for directions. Nothing more, Your Grace, I swear it. I would never...I did not mean..."
"You should be grateful to even gaze upon her," Aerion interrupted, his voice dripping with bored disdain. He did not look at the hedge knight. He looked at you, and some of the tension bled from his shoulders, though his posture remained rigid with proprietary pride. "Let alone speak to her. She is a princess now, by marriage if not by birth. Her face is not for the likes of you."
"I am grateful," Ser Duncan said, and he sounded it. "Truly, my prince. The princess was most kind. Most generous with her time. I thank her. I thank you both."
"Yes, yes." Aerion waved a dismissive hand, already bored with the interaction. "You have gazed. You have spoken. You have been granted more than you deserve. Now fuck off."
Ser Duncan did not need to be told twice. He sketched a hasty bow, awkward and unpracticed, the bow of a man who had never quite learned the proper forms, and retreated with impressive speed for a man of his size. You watched him go, disappearing between the pavilions, and felt a small pang of sympathy. He had meant well. He had been kind. And you had lied to protect him from your husband's wrath.
Aerion's hand closed around your wrist. "Inside."
He did not wait for your response. He tugged you back into the tent, letting the flap fall closed behind you. The ruined bed still lay in splinters on the ground, the furs scattered, the evidence of your afternoon's activities plain for anyone to see. Aerion ignored it. He set the wine and goblets on a chest and turned to face you, his arms crossed over his chest.
"A hedge knight," he said flatly. "A great lumbering hedge knight, looming over my wife, making her laugh."
"He was lost," you said again, keeping your voice soft. "Nothing more."
"He was looking at you." Aerion's jaw tightened. "The way men look at things they want."
"Aerion." You stepped closer to him, reaching up to smooth the collar of his unlaced tunic. Your fingers brushed his throat, and you felt his pulse leap beneath your touch. "He was a poor hedge knight who lost his way. He asked for directions. I gave them. He was grateful. That is all."
"He wanted you," Aerion said again, but some of the sharpness had faded from his voice. "I saw it in his eyes."
"He wanted to know if I was well." You rose on your toes and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "He heard sounds from the tent. He was concerned. That is all."
Aerion's hands found your waist, pulling you closer. "Concerned. About my wife. As if I would ever harm what is mine."
"You play rough games, husband. You cannot blame a stranger for misunderstanding."
"I can blame anyone I like. I am a prince."
You laughed, and the sound seemed to ease something in him. His grip on your waist gentled, his thumbs tracing slow circles through the wool of your robe.
"This gown," he said. "This grey wool thing. You look like a septa. A very pretty septa, but a septa nonetheless. I will not have it."
"It was the first thing I found. My other gown was..."
"I know what your other gown was." His smile curved, sharp and satisfied. "I remember removing it. I remember every moment of removing it." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your throat. "But you cannot wear this to lord Ashford's castle. You cannot wear this to the feast tonight. You cannot wear this anywhere that anyone might see you and think I do not dress my wife as befits her station."
"Then take me to the castle," you said, your voice soft and coaxing. "Lord Ashford has given us chambers. Let us go there now. You can rest properly before the tourney tomorrow, on a real bed, not this splintered mess." You gestured at the ruined camp bed. "And I will try on every gown I brought. Every jewel. You can choose which one you would like to see me in for the feast."
His eyes darkened. "Choose?"
"Choose." You reached up and traced the line of his jaw with your fingertips. "I am your wife. I should dress to please you. Should I not?"
He stared at you for a long moment. Then, slowly, his lips curved into that familiar, dangerous smile. "You are playing me."
"I am pleasing you. There is a difference."
"Is there?"
You smiled and said nothing.
He kissed you and then released you. "Very well. To the castle. But if I am to rest properly, wife, you will be resting beside me. I did not travel all this way to sleep alone."
"I would expect nothing less."
a/n: You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
a/n: Aerion is not as nice here as in Growing Strong series because nobody can train him quite like lady Tyrell!reader.
SUMMARY: Kidnapped as a child and presumed dead, you survive years of abuse before becoming the kept woman of Prince Aerion Targaryen. In a world where survival means loving a monster, your fragile sense of safety shatters when your past resurfaces in the worst possible way.
TW: rape, sexual abuse, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, domestic abuse, dubious consent, trauma bonding, graphic violence, torture, child endangerment, kidnapping, misogyny
WC:25K
209 A.C Flea Bottom
The first thing you ever remembered was your brother’s hands.
Not your mother’s face, that was gone, worn away like a coin passed through too many fingers. You could summon the shape of her if you concentrated: the blurred watermark of a jawline, the suggestion of a mouth that laughed like a cracked bell, the smell of cheap wine and cheaper perfume that clung to her hair long after she stopped breathing. But her face? No. That belonged to the dark now, along with everything else from before.
But the hands, those you remembered. Dunk’s hands. Too large for a boy of eight, the knuckles already crosshatched with scars from street fights and kitchen fires, but impossibly gentle as they lifted you from the straw mattress where your mother lay cold and still. You had been five years old. You had not understood death, only that Mother would not wake. It was Dunk who wrapped you in a blanket thin enough to see through. Dunk who carried you out into the grey morning, your face pressed to his neck so you would not see the body being hauled away. Dunk who said, in a voice that splintered because he was barely more than a child himself, “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”
And he had, you slept in doorways at first, curled together like kittens against the cold that seeped up through the cobblestones. Dunk learned quickly which bakers threw out day old bread and which watchmen could be bribed with a sad eyed look. He found work at an inn in Flea Bottom and the innkeeper’s wife let you sleep in the stables so long as Dunk scrubbed the floors and hauled the kegs and made himself useful in a dozen small ways. You would sit in the corner while he worked, your knees drawn up to your chin, watching him. Watching the boy melt away, season by season, into something that looked more like a man. He grew taller and broader and harder, his shoulders widening, his voice dropping. He was three years older than you, but sometimes he felt like thirty. He had never been a child. Neither of you had.
But you had each other. And that was enough. It had to be.
Every night, after his labors were done, Dunk would come to you in the stables. He would reek of sweat and sour ale, and he would lower himself onto the hay beside you with a groan that belonged to a man three times his age. And then he would tell you stories he’d gathered like dropped coins from travelers and old soldiers and the septon who sometimes came to beg a bowl of soup. Stories of knights who never faltered, dragons who spoke in riddles, castles of white stone that caught the sunrise like mirrors. Maidens so beautiful that kingdoms burned for a single glance.
You were twelve when the men began to notice you. It happened on an ordinary night, with an ordinary drunk who’d had too much ale and too little sense. You were carrying a tray of empty cups back to the kitchen, your arms aching with the weight, when a hand came out of nowhere and closed on your backside. You froze, no understanding of what the sudden heat crawling up your neck meant or why your body had locked itself rigid as a board. The man laughed and then Dunk was there.
One moment the drunk was leering at you, his hand still on your body, and the next he was on the floor with blood fountaining from his nose and Dunk standing over him like a thunderhead. He threw the man out into the mud, and when he came back inside his hands were trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to warp the air around him. “Stay close to me,” he said, and it was not a request. His voice was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that lives on the far side of fury. “Always. Do you understand? Always.”
You understood. From that day forward, you were never more than arm’s reach from your brother. When he walked to the market, you walked beside him, your fingers sometimes hooked into the rope that acted like a belt, when the crowds pressed too close. The men still looked, by fourteen, you had grown into the kind of beauty that stilled conversations mid sentence, your mother’s eyes and your unknown father’s soft mouth arranged on a face that seemed to belong in a ballad rather than a Flea Bottom inn, but they looked from a distance. Dunk saw to that.
You were inseparable. Joined at the hip, the innkeeper’s wife liked to say, shaking her head with a fondness that bordered on bewilderment. “Never seen the like. That boy would tear the world apart for his little sister.”
You were sixteen when everything ended. The festival came in the spring, an eruption of color and noise that spilled from the gates of the Red Keep and flooded through the city like a tide. Mummers on stilts, jugglers with flaming torches, singers with harps slung across their backs, knights in armor that caught the sun and threw it back in a thousand glittering shards. Dunk had been given the night off—a rarity—and he had taken your hand with a grin you hadn’t seen since you were children hiding from the rain under a stolen tarp. “Come on,” he said, and his eyes were bright in a way that made your chest ache.
You laughed and followed. The crowd was too thick. The torches made everything swim, light and shadow bleeding together until faces became masks and masks became faces. Dunk kept his hand clamped around your arm for the first hour, his grip unwavering, but then a knot of drunkards staggered between you and in the space of a single heartbeat, you lost him.
“Dunk?”
You rose onto your toes, straining above the heads of the crowd. You saw him turn, saw his mouth open to call back to you, saw the sudden alarm flash across his features, and then the surge of bodies carried you sideways, a riptide of flesh and noise, and you stumbled into an alley to escape the crush.
That was when they took you. There were three of them. You never saw their faces clearly, only hands. Rough and quick and impossibly strong, one clamping over your mouth, another banding around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground. You tried to scream. You bit down on the palm pressed against your lips, tasted blood and salt and felt the man curse and shift his grip, but there was no time. A sack came down over your head, coarse and stinking of something you did not want to name, and the world went dark and muffled and small.
The last thing you heard was the festival. The music, the laughter, the endless churn of celebration. It went on without you, as if you had never been there at all.
Dunk searched for three days. He did not sleep. He did not eat. He tore through Flea Bottom like a storm given flesh, overturning carts and kicking down doors, bellowing your name until his voice shredded into something barely human. He went to the City Watch, and they laughed, a girl from the slums, what did he expect? He went to the sept, and the septon only clasped his hands and murmured prayers that tasted like ash. He went to every inn, every brothel, every lightless corner of the city where a girl might be hidden or sold or worse, and he found nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nothing again.
On the fourth day, a woman came to him, she found him in the alley where you had vanished, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands, and she knelt beside him.
“You’re the one,” she said. Not a question. “Looking for the girl with the H/C hair. The pretty one.”
Dunk’s head came up so fast his neck cracked. “Where is she?”
The woman shook her head. Slowly. Deliberately. A gesture that held everything he did not want to know. “They found her in the water this morning, lad. Some men…” She paused, and something that might have been pity flickered across her ruined face. “They took her. And when they were done—” Her hands made a twisting motion, a brutal pantomime that needed no translation. “The women who found her said she was hardly recognizable. They’ve already burned the body. Too much damage, they said. You don’t want to see that. Trust me. You’re better off remembering her the way she was.”
Dunk did not speak. He simply sat there, staring at the woman’s face, and something inside him cracked straight down the middle and bled dry.
“Who?” His voice did not sound like his voice. “Who did it?”
“No one knows. Drunkards, maybe. Travelers passing through. They’re long gone now.” The woman rose, joints creaking, and looked down at him with something that was not quite pity and not quite indifference. “I’m sorry, lad. Truly.”
She left him there. And Dunk stayed. He stayed in that alley as the sun bled out and the moon rose pale and indifferent and the city settled into its night noises around him. His little sister was dead. He had promised—promised—to protect her, and she was dead. And the world, which had never been kind to either of them, now seemed to hold no color.
—
213 A.C Ashford
The gardens of Ashford Castle were not as grand as the ones in Summerhall but they were still beautiful. You had been here for less than a fortnight, arrived as part of Prince Maekar's retinue for the tourney celebrating Lord Ashford's daughter's nameday, and already the place had worked its way under your skin. The roses were in full bloom, cascading over stone walls in waves of crimson and gold and softest pink. The hedges were trimmed into the shapes of birds and beasts.
The little girl was running through the grass ahead of you, her silver gold hair streaming behind her like a banner caught in a high wind, her bare feet slapping against the earth with the unselfconscious joy of someone who had never known hunger or fear or the back of a stranger's hand. She was two years old, small for her age but fierce, so fiercely alive that it stopped your breath sometimes, with violet eyes that missed nothing and a laugh that could fill an entire hall and still demand more room.
"Rhaenyra," you called, and you tried to sound stern, you really did, but the smile kept breaking through no matter how firmly you set your jaw. "Come back here before you trip and ruin that dress."
"Won't," the child announced, with the absolute conviction of someone who had never been wrong about anything in her life, and kept running.
You sighed, gathered your skirts in both hands, and gave chase. The dress you wore was finer than anything you had owned before Aerion had claimed you, a gift he had given you specifically for this journey. Pale blue silk that whispered when you moved, with silver embroidery at the sleeves and neckline. He had wanted you to look presentable at Ashford. You suspected, though you had not said it aloud, that he also wanted to show you off. To remind his family, and perhaps himself, what he possessed.
You were twenty years old now, no longer the trembling girl who had been thrown into a black carriage while a brothel burned behind her, no longer the hollow eyed creature who had learned to disappear inside her own body while men did what they pleased. The past months and years had reshaped you, smoothed some of the sharp edges and hardened others.
But there was something new in you now, something forged in the long nights of learning to survive Aerion Targaryen and the longer days of learning to love your daughter. You knew how to bend without breaking. And you knew, with a certainty that lived in your bones like marrow, that you would kill any living soul who tried to harm your child.
Rhaenyra had tripped over an exposed root and was sitting in the grass, more affronted than injured, examining a smudge of dirt on her palm with the grave concentration of a maester confronted with an ancient and inscrutable text. You scooped her up before the tears could organize themselves, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the smell of sunshine and crushed grass and something warm and sweet that was just her.
"Told you," you murmured into her hair. "You fell."
"Didn't cry," Rhaenyra pointed out. This was technically true, and there was a note of such fierce pride in her small voice that your heart performed an odd, painful little flip in your chest.
"No," you agreed, pulling back to look at her solemn face. "You didn't. You're a brave little dragon, aren't you?"
The child beamed. She adored being called a dragon. It was one of the few gifts Aerion had given her that did not make your stomach twist into complicated knots. This inheritance of fire and blood and the unshakeable conviction that she was meant for something magnificent.
You carried her back toward the castle, her small arms wrapped tightly around your neck, her voice a ceaseless ribbon of chatter about the butterfly she had almost caught and the bird that had flown directly over her head and the flower she had picked that was pink, Mama, pink and pretty and can I keep it forever please please please. You made the appropriate sounds of wonder and encouragement, your eyes scanning the courtyard as you crossed it, your body perpetually aware of who was watching.
The servants of Ashford avoided your gaze, much as the ones at Summerhall did. They had learned, over the course of the tourney's first days, to treat you with a careful neutrality. Not quite respect, not quite disdain, something suspended in the ambiguous space between. They knew what you were. Prince Aerion's paramour. The woman he had brought with him from Summerhall, installed in a guest chamber near his own, paraded through the grounds like a provocative piece of art he wanted everyone to see whether they wished to or not. They did not speak to you unless absolutely necessary, did not meet your eyes, did not acknowledge the child in your arms except to incline their heads stiffly and step aside.
Ashford Castle was a crowded place during the tourney. Lord Ashford's daughter Gwin had turned thirteen, and to honor her nameday, her father had declared a tourney that would last five days. Knights and lords from across the Reach and beyond had gathered to compete, their banners snapping in the spring breeze, their pavilions spreading across the fields like a crop of colorful mushrooms.
Prince Maekar's entire family had come with his children. You saw them sometimes, in the corridors or the courtyards or the great hall at supper, but you never spoke to them. You were not permitted. Prince Maekar had made that blisteringly clear from the very beginning, his voice cold with a disgust he did not bother to disguise.
"The woman stays in her chambers," he had told Aerion when he first met you. "I will not have her parading about in front of the children. She is a whore, Aerion. A whore and you will not embarrass this family."
Aerion had not argued. He rarely argued with his father directly. But he had kept you anyway, had dressed you in silk and silver, had installed you in a room that connected to his own. And now you were here, carrying your daughter back toward the keep while the roses nodded in the breeze and the distant sounds of the tourney grounds drifted over the walls like distant thunder. You had not been permitted to attend the jousts. Not since the yesterday.
You closed your eyes for a moment against the memory. It had been horrible. Aerion's tilt against Ser Humfrey. You had been watching from the stands, Rhaenyra on your lap, your heart in your throat the way it always was when he rode. He was a skilled jouster, your prince, but he rode with a recklessness that bordered on suicidal, and sometimes you thought he would not be satisfied until he left someone broken in the dirt.
This time, he had aimed too low. Deliberately, you were almost certain, though you would never say so aloud. His lance had struck Ser Humfrey's horse in the neck, a brutal, illegal blow that sent the animal crashing to the ground with a scream that would haunt your nightmares for weeks. Ser Humfrey had been thrown, his leg twisted at an angle that made your stomach lurch, and the horse had thrashed in the dirt with blood pumping from its throat.
The crowd had broken through the barriers. Prince Baelor Breakspear himself had risen from his seat, his face a mask of disgust, and you had seen the way he looked at Aerion. The way everyone looked at Aerion. Like he was something monstrous. Something broken beyond repair.
Aerion had found you afterward, still flushed with adrenaline, his eyes too bright. He had forbidden you from attending any more of the jousts.
"It's not safe," he had said, his grip on your arm just shy of bruising. "The crowds are unpredictable. The horses are dangerous. You and Rhaenyra will stay in the castle or the gardens. I don't want you anywhere near the lists."
You had not argued. You rarely argued with him about things that mattered. But you had seen the truth behind his words, the truth he would never admit. He did not want you to see him lose. He did not want you to see the way the other knights looked at him after what he had done.
So you had stayed away. You had walked in the gardens, and played with Rhaenyra, and smiled your careful smile whenever Aerion returned to your chambers in the evenings, bruised and bristling and desperate for the praise only you could give him.
"Up," Rhaenyra demanded as you approached the castle's side entrance. "Up high, Mama. I want to see."
You lifted her higher, settling her higher on your hip with the practiced ease of two years of motherhood, and she gazed around the corridor with the same wide eyed wonder she brought to everything. You loved her so much it scared you sometimes. Loved her with a ferocity that made the love you had felt for your own mother, dim and distant and blurred at the edges, seem like a candle held up against the sun.
"You spoil her."
The voice came from behind you, and you did not startle. Months with Aerion had taught you the particular cadence of his footsteps, the faint jingle of the sword he wore even at peace, the way the air in a room seemed to tighten and grow watchful when he entered. You turned, shifting Rhaenyra to your other hip with a fluidity that had become second nature, and offered him the smile you had perfected over your time together.
It was not a false smile. That was the strange thing, the thing that still surprised you when you stopped to examine it. It was not false at all. There was calculation in it, yes. There was calculation in everything you did, a habit you could not have broken if you tried. But there was warmth there too. The warmth of a woman looking at a man she had somehow, against all odds and reason, come to care for.
Love. The word still felt strange in your mouth, like a garment that did not quite fit. Aerion was not kind. He was not gentle. He was not good, in any sense that your brother Dunk would have recognized. But he was yours, in his possessive, consuming, infuriating way, and you were his, and somewhere in the crucible of the past years, that mutual belonging had transmuted into something that looked, from certain angles, remarkably like love.
He was not a tall man, standing at five and a half feet, and you knew it rankled at him. Knew that every inch he lacked compared to the warriors he trained with was a splinter under his skin. But what he lacked in height he more than compensated for in presence. The way his boots struck the stone floors, deliberate and commanding. The sharp, hawkish beauty of his face, all angles and shadows. The particular weight of his attention when it landed on you, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.
"My dragon," you said, and the word was warm, intimate, a private jest between you that no one else would recognize. "She wanted to explore the gardens. You know how she loves the roses."
He stepped closer, and Rhaenyra immediately lunged toward him, her small arms outstretched, her face alight with the uncomplicated adoration of a child who had never been given a reason to fear her father. "Papa! Papa, I found a flower!"
She had dropped the flower somewhere in the garden, of course. You had seen it fall, a little pink bruise against the green grass, left behind in her headlong rush toward the next thing and the next and the next. But Aerion did not know that, and you suspected he would not have cared if he did. He took the girl from your arms with an ease that still surprised you, settling her against his chest as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life.
Aerion, who was never gentle with anyone. Aerion, whose hands had left bruises on your body in the early days. Aerion, who had aimed his lance at a horse's throat and watched it die without flinching.
But Rhaenyra had never seen that side of him. Rhaenyra saw only the father who bounced her on his knee and called her his little dragon and looked at her as if she were the single good thing he had managed to produce in a life full of sharp edges and bad decisions. And you saw both versions of him, the monster and the man, and you had learned to hold them both in your mind at once, to love the whole complicated, contradictory mess of him.
"A flower," Aerion repeated, bouncing Rhaenyra gently against his chest. "What color?"
"Pink!"
"Pink," he said, with the solemnity of a man receiving a sacred revelation. "Pink is an excellent color. You have impeccable taste."
Rhaenyra giggled, burying her face in the curve of his neck, and Aerion's eyes met yours over the top of her head. There was something in his gaze. A flicker of warmth, a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. It made your heart clench in that way you had long since stopped trying to explain away.
I love him, you thought, and the thought did not feel like a lie. It felt like the truth, strange and inconvenient and slightly terrifying though it was. Gods help me, I truly do.
You knew what people would say if they could hear your thoughts. How can you love him? After what he did to that horse? After what he did to you? After what he is? And they would not be wrong to ask. The early days had been brutal; there was no use pretending otherwise. He had hurt you, in ways that still surfaced in your dreams on bad nights. He had fucked you without asking, had demanded without giving, had treated your body like territory to be conquered and your compliance like tribute to be extracted.
But then something had shifted. Slowly, incrementally, in the way of seasons changing. He had begun to see you. The woman who praised him when no one else would. The woman who listened to his fears and his rages and his strange, tangled dreams of dragonfire and destiny. The woman who had given him a daughter and held his hand through the disappointment and taught him, patient as a stone worn smooth by water, how to be something other than cruel.
And you had seen him, the man underneath, the one who craved praise because he had never received it, the one who lashed out because he had never learned another way to ask for what he needed. You had seen him, and against all wisdom, against all self preservation, you had loved him.
He still hurt you, sometimes. When his black moods descended and his hands grew rough and the words that came out of his mouth were designed to wound. But those moments were rarer now, spaced further and further apart, and after each one he would come to you with his arms full of gifts. Dresses of silk and velvet, jewels that glittered in their velvet nests, books with leather bindings and gold leaf on the pages that you devoured in the quiet hours when he was training and Rhaenyra was napping. He would hold you afterward, his face pressed into your hair, his arms wrapped around you like a cage he was afraid you might slip through.
"You understand me," he would whisper, and his voice would crack on the words in a way that made your heart splinter. "You're the only one who does. The only one who ever has. Don't leave me. Promise me you won't leave."
And you, holding him in the dark, would stroke his short silver hair and murmur the words he needed to hear. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."
You meant them, too. That was the strangest part. After everything, you meant them.
Where would I even go? you thought, watching him bounce your daughter in his arms in this borrowed garden in a borrowed castle, surrounded by roses that belonged to someone else.
You looked at Rhaenyra, at the small, fierce face that was so clearly her father's, and you thought about the day she had been born.
It had been the longest day of your life.
The labor had lasted nearly eighteen hours. You had screamed until your voice gave out entirely, had bitten straight through the leather strap the midwife had given you, had prayed to gods you had not believed in since childhood to make it stop, please make it stop, I can't do this, I'm going to die, please let me die. Aerion had paced outside the door like a caged animal, his boots wearing a groove in the stone, demanding updates every few minutes and threatening bodily harm to the maester whenever the news was not to his liking.
"Is it a boy?" he had shouted through the door, over and over, his voice fraying at the edges. "Tell me it's a boy. It has to be a boy. I'm going to name him Maegor. A strong name. A dragon's name. Tell me!"
You had heard him, even through the wall of agony that had swallowed the world, and you had felt a cold dread settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water. Maegor. He wanted to name his son after Maegor the Cruel. You had prayed then, harder than you had ever prayed in your life, with what remained of your shredded voice and your failing strength. Not a boy. Please, not a boy. Whatever else you give me, don't give me a boy who will carry that name.
The gods, for once in their capricious existence, had listened.
When the baby had finally emerged, slick and furious and impossibly, breathtakingly alive, the maester had looked between her tiny legs and pronounced, with the careful neutrality of a man who knew exactly how dangerous this moment was: "A girl, my prince. A healthy girl."
The silence that followed had been more terrifying than any scream.
Aerion had burst into the room, his face pale as milk, his short hair standing up in wild disarray from running his hands through it for eighteen hours. He had stared at the child in the maester's arms. At the tuft of silver gold hair plastered to her scalp, at the violet eyes that were already open and glaring at the world with an indignation that seemed profoundly personal. His expression had twisted into something ugly.
"A girl," he had said, and his voice was flat. Hollow. A room with all the furniture removed. "I waited nine moons. Nine moons. For a girl."
He had not touched you. He had not touched the baby. He had simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and you had heard his boots ring down the corridor, and then the distant slam of a door, and then nothing.
The next three days had been the darkest of your new life. Aerion did not come to your room. He did not send for you. He did not acknowledge the existence of the child at all. He ate his meals with his family, trained in the yard with a brutality that left his sparring partners bloodied and bewildered, and refused to speak to anyone who so much as mentioned the baby's existence. The girl, the servants called her in whispers, because she had no name yet, and a child without a name was a ghost.
You lay in your bed, your body slowly knitting itself back together, your breasts aching with milk, and you held your daughter against your chest and wondered if this was the end. If Aerion would cast you both out, send you back to the streets of King's Landing with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bastard child in your arms. You made plans in the dark hours. Foolish, desperate plans, the kind of plans that only seemed reasonable at three in the morning when you were alone and terrified and your stitches still pulled every time you moved. You would run. You would find Dunk if he was still alive, throw yourself at his feet, beg him to take you back even though you were ruined and used and nothing like the sister he had lost. You would find work, honest work, kitchen work, anything, and you would raise your daughter to be strong and fierce and free, and she would never, ever know what it felt like to be owned.
But on the fourth day, the door had opened.
Aerion stood in the frame, and you barely recognized him. His eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises, his short hair a disheveled mess, his fine clothes rumpled and stained as if he had been sleeping in them, or not sleeping at all. He had been wrestling with something, you realized. Himself, his pride, his expectations, his disappointment. And from the look of him, he had lost.
"Let me see her," he said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, as if he had been shouting or weeping or both. "Let me see my daughter."
You did not trust yourself to speak. You simply lifted the baby from your chest. She was awake, her violet eyes tracking the movement with that unnerving intensity newborns sometimes had. And you held her out toward him.
Aerion approached slowly, cautiously, like a man approaching a wounded animal that might bite. He looked down at the small, wrinkled face, at the silver gold fuzz on her head, at the tiny fists that clenched and unclenched in the air as if she were already fighting battles only she could see. And something in his expression shifted. Not softened. Aerion did not soften, not in any way you had ever witnessed. But cracked. A fissure in the ice, unexpected and profound.
"She looks like me," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," you whispered, your voice still ruined from screaming. "She's a true dragon, my prince. Just like her father."
He reached out one finger, just one, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly, and touched the baby's cheek. Rhaenyra turned her head toward the contact, her tiny mouth opening and closing in that instinctive rooting reflex.
"Rhaenyra," he said. "I'll call her Rhaenyra."
You knew the name, of course. Everyone in Westeros knew the name. The princess who had been called Maegor with teats, who had fought a war that tore the realm in half and refused to surrender even when the odds were hopeless. It was a name soaked in controversy, in blood, in the stubborn refusal to be anything other than what she was. It was a cruel name to give an infant daughter, in some ways. A challenge. A provocation. A reminder that girls could be as dangerous as boys, if they were bold enough.
But it was not Maegor. It was not the name of the Cruel. And on that fourth day, with your daughter finally named and Aerion's hand resting awkwardly, almost shyly, on your shoulder, you had decided to be grateful for small mercies.
"Rhaenyra," you repeated, trying the name on your tongue. It tasted like strength. Like fire. Like survival. "My little dragon."
And now, two years later, watching that same daughter tug impatiently at Aerion's doublet while he laughed, that hope had only grown. Rhaenyra was fierce and stubborn and clever and alive, so vibrantly alive, and you would make certain she stayed that way. You would die before you let that happen. You would kill before you let that happen. And the truth of that, the absolute crystalline certainty of it, was the most liberating thing you had ever felt.
"Y/N."
Aerion's voice pulled you back from the precipice of memory. He was watching you over Rhaenyra's silver gold head, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and irritation.
"You're brooding again," he said. "You get that look on your face when you're thinking too hard. I've told you. I don't like it."
You let your expression shift, the distant look replaced by something warmer, more present. But you did not apologize; you had learned, over your time together, that apologizing for your thoughts only made him more suspicious. Instead, you reached out and straightened the collar of his doublet, letting your fingers brush the skin of his throat, a gesture of casual intimacy that you knew he craved even if he would never admit it.
"I was thinking about how happy she looks," you said, and it was the truth, or a version of it. "You make her happy, Aerion. You know that, don't you?"
He grunted, but you caught the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his features before he could suppress it. Praise. He could never get enough of it, had been starved for it his entire life, and you had learned to feed him with the same regularity you fed your daughter. All this time, and he still turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, drinking in every affirmation, every acknowledgment, every whispered you are magnificent, you are powerful, you are loved.
"She's a dragon," Aerion said, adjusting Rhaenyra on his hip with practiced ease. "Dragons don't get sad. They incinerate the things that upset them."
"Papa," Rhaenyra said, with the sudden, intense solemnity that only a two-year-old can muster, "I want to incinerate something."
Aerion threw back his head and laughed. A real laugh, full throated and genuine, the kind of laugh that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish, almost approachable. "That's my girl," he said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead with an uncharacteristic tenderness. "That's my little dragon. We'll find you something to burn later."
You watched them, this strange, fierce man and this strange, fierce child, and your heart performed that complicated maneuver it had been practicing for years, folding affection and exasperation and hope and fear all into one impossible shape.
This is real, you told yourself. Whatever else is happening, whatever else they say about us, this is real. He is my Aerion, and she is my daughter, and this is my life, and it is real.
Aerion shifted Rhaenyra to his other arm and extended his free hand toward you. His earlier tension seemed to have eased, replaced by something almost eager, a restless energy that crackled just beneath his skin.
"There's a play tonight," he said. "Some puppeteers have set up in the village. I've heard it's about a dragon." His mouth curved into that sharp, knowing smile you had come to recognize. "I thought we might go after supper. You and me and the little dragon here. She should see something worthy of her name."
Rhaenyra's head came up at the word dragon, her violet eyes bright. "A dragon play, Papa?"
"A dragon play," Aerion confirmed, tweaking her nose. "With fire and scales and everything a proper dragon ought to have. Would you like that?"
Rhaenyra's shriek of delight was answer enough. She bounced in his arms, clapping her small hands together, already launching into a stream of questions about whether the dragon would be big or small, whether it would breathe real fire, whether she could meet it afterward and be its friend.
You smiled, and this time there was no calculation in it at all. Aerion was trying. In his own strange, possessive way, he was trying. He had brought you to Ashford to wound his cousin, yes. He had paraded you in front of his family like a trophy, yes. But he was also here, in this sunlit corridor, planning an evening at a play with his paramour and his bastard daughter, and there was something in his face that you had learned to recognize as hope.
"That sounds wonderful," you said, and meant it. "Rhaenyra will be talking about it for weeks."
"She'll be talking about it regardless," Aerion said dryly. "The child never stops talking. She gets that from you."
"From me?" You pressed a hand to your chest in mock offense. "I am the very soul of silence, my prince."
Aerion snorted. It was an undignified sound, entirely at odds with the sharp, cruel prince the rest of the world knew. "You are a terrible liar, Y/N. You always have been."
But he was smiling when he said it, and when he offered you his arm, you took it without hesitation. Rhaenyra was still chattering about dragons, her small voice filling the corridor with improbable questions and even more improbable declarations. Aerion answered her with patience, with warmth, with the particular tenderness he reserved for her alone.
And you walked beside them through the halls of Ashford Castle, your hand on Aerion's arm, your daughter's laughter echoing off the stones, and for this moment, this single bright moment, you let yourself believe that everything would be all right.
—
The screaming started before you understood what was happening.
One moment there had been music, the thin reedy piping of a flute and the thump of a hand drum, and Rhaenyra had been bouncing on your hip with her small hands clapping together in delight. The painted dragon had been swaying above the stage on its strings, its wings catching the torchlight, its jaws opening and closing in roar while the puppeteer below made a rumbling growl deep in her throat to give it voice. Rhaenyra had laughed. You could still hear the echo of that laugh, bright and silver and utterly without fear.
Then Aerion and the white cloaks moved, and the world splintered. The first tent pole went down with a sound like a thunderclap. Silk billowed inward, red and gold and orange, catching the torchlight and becoming flame even as it fell. People were screaming. People were running. A woman stumbled into you from behind and you curled around Rhaenyra on pure instinct, your spine curving, your arms locking, your body becoming a shell with your daughter at its center. Someone's elbow drove into your ribs and you felt something grind and shift and send a bright white bolt of pain up your side.
"Mama," Rhaenyra whimpered, and her voice was small, so terribly small, the voice of a child who did not understand why the world had turned cruel between one heartbeat and the next. "Mama, I want to go. I want to go home."
"Shh," you breathed into her hair, though your own voice was shaking so badly the word hardly had a shape. "Shh, my love, my dragon, Mama's here. Mama's got you. Close your eyes, sweetling. Close your eyes and it will be over soon."
She buried her face in the curve of your throat. You could feel her tears, hot and wet, soaking through the silk of your gown. You could feel her heart beating against your chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. You could feel every tremor that ran through her small body, and each one was a knife slipped between your ribs.
The guard Aerion had assigned to you stood at your back like a statue carved from ice. Ser Harrold, his name was, you had begged him to escort you from the pavilion the moment the violence began. You had turned to him with Rhaenyra clutched against your chest and pleaded with him to let you leave, to let you take your daughter somewhere safe, somewhere the screaming did not reach.
He had looked at you with eyes that held no more warmth than a winter pond. "Prince's orders," he had said, and the words fell from his mouth like stones dropped into still water. "You stay until he says otherwise."
"But she's frightened," you had said, and you had hated the tremor in your voice, hated the way it made you sound weak when you needed to be strong. "She's two years old, Ser Harrold. She doesn't understand what's happening. Please."
"Prince's orders," he had repeated, and he had not looked at you again.
On the stage, Aerion had the puppeteer by the wrist. She was young. That was the detail that lodged itself in your memory like a splinter, the detail that would come back to you in the dark hours of the night for years afterward. She was young, perhaps your age. Her mouth was open in a scream that you could not hear over the roaring of the crowd, and her free hand was beating uselessly against Aerion's chest, against his arm, against the unyielding iron of his grip.
She had made a dragon out of paint and wood and string. She had painted scales on its wings with her own hands, had worked its jaws with her own fingers, had given it a voice that made children laugh and grown men cheer. She had made the terrible, fatal mistake of letting her dragon be killed in the story she told. The knight had slain it with his sword and the audience had gasped and clapped and cheered the hero's victory.
Aerion had not cheered. Aerion had stared with a face like a thunderhead, and then the Kingsguard had begun to move, and now he was on the stage with the puppeteer's wrist in his hand and her dragon lying forgotten at his feet.
He started with her fingers. The first one broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot in the depths of winter. It was surprisingly quiet, that sound, almost delicate, almost polite. The puppeteer's index finger bent backward at an angle that made your stomach contract violently, and she screamed, a high thin shriek that cut through the chaos of the pavilion like a blade through silk.
Rhaenyra flinched in your arms. "Mama," she whimpered, "why is the lady screaming? Is she hurt? Mama, I want to go."
"Close your eyes, sweetling," you whispered again, and your voice was breaking now, splintering into pieces you could not put back together. "Close your eyes and think of something nice. Think of the roses in the garden. Think of the pink flower you picked. Think of anything but this."
The second finger broke wetter than the first. A muffled, grinding crack that seemed to echo in the hollow of your chest. The puppeteer's legs gave out beneath her, but Aerion held her up by her ruined hand,ìand his face, his beautiful face that you had kissed and praised and learned to love, was alight with something that went beyond cruelty into a territory you had no name for.
Pleasure. A bright, burning pleasure that lit him from within like a lantern lights a room. His violet eyes were wide and shining, his lips parted slightly around his bloodied teeth, his breath coming in short sharp bursts that were almost sexual in their rhythm. He was enjoying this. He was enjoying this in a way he had never enjoyed a single moment of the years you had spent together, and the realization crashed into you like a wave into rocks, cold and brutal and undeniable.
You love him, you had thought earlier in the gardens. No, you hate him. That was the horror of it, the horror that would never leave you no matter how many years passed. You loved him, you loved the father of your child, you loved the man who had burned down a brothel for you. You loved him, and he was standing on a stage in a village called Ashford, breaking a girl's fingers one by one because her puppet show had insulted his pride.
The third finger made a sound like a walnut being crushed in a vise.
"Please," you heard yourself saying, and you did not know if you were speaking to Aerion or to Ser Harrold or to the gods who had never listened to a single prayer you had ever sent their way. "Please, someone stop him. Someone make him stop."
Ser Harrold's hand closed around your upper arm, immobilizing you. He was wearing gauntlets, the leather stiff and unyielding against your skin. "Hold still," he said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had learned long ago that obedience was safer than conscience.
The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.
Then the giant came out of the crowd. His hair was dirty blonde, cut short against his skull in a way that suggested practicality rather than fashion, and it was matted with sweat and dust and something that might have been blood. His face was a shadowed blur in the torchlight, his features obscured by the angle and the distance and the chaos, but his size. Gods above and below, his size.
He was enormous. Seven feet of bone and muscle and righteous fury, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight behind him and hands the size of dinner plates curled into fists at his sides. He did not slow. He did not hesitate. He cleared the edge of the stage in a single stride, and then he was on Aerion, and his fist was connecting with the prince's face with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.
Aerion staggered backward. His grip on the puppeteer's wrist broke, and she crumpled to the stage in a heap of brown wool and ruined hands, sobbing. Blood flew from Aerion's mouth in a dark arc that caught the torchlight and glittered like rubies scattered across the stage. He hit the wooden planking hard, his head snapping back against the boards, and for one impossible, crystalline moment, the entire pavilion went silent.
Then the Kingsguard moved. They came from every direction at once, white cloaks streaming behind them like wings, white enameled armor flashing in the firelight. Six of them. Seven. More, perhaps. They swarmed the big man the way wolves swarm a bear, throwing themselves onto his back and his arms and his legs, trying to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. He fought them. Gods, he fought them. You saw one Kingsguard reel backward with blood pouring from the visor of his helm. You saw another take an elbow to the throat and go down choking, clawing at his gorget. You saw the big man's fists rise and fall and rise again with the relentless rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer, each blow carrying the weight of a righteous anger that no amount of white armor could withstand.
But there were too many. There were always too many. They dragged at his legs and his arms and his neck, six white cloaked knights and then seven and then eight, and still he nearly threw them off, still he nearly got free, still he nearly made it back to his feet with his massive hands reaching for Aerion again. Then one of the Kingsguard drove the pommel of his sword into the back of the big man's skull, and his knees buckled. Another kicked his legs out from under him. Another twisted his arm behind his back at an angle that made the joint scream in protest even from where you stood watching.
They forced him to his knees on the stage. One of them, a tall man with a captain's bars on his white cloak, grabbed a fistful of that dirty blonde hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up into the torchlight.
Aerion rose to his feet. He moved slowly, carefully, the way a man moves when he is holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads. His lip was split open, a gash that ran from the corner of his mouth nearly to his chin. Blood sheeted down his jaw and dripped onto the white silk of his collar, staining it crimson. He probed at his teeth with his tongue, grimaced, and spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the stage. Something small and white and hard skittered across the wooden boards.
“Why did you throw your life away for this whore” Aerion said.
"You've loosened one of my teeth,"
The pavilion had gone very quiet. The screaming had stopped, or perhaps it had simply receded to a distance where it could no longer reach you. The only sounds were the crackle of the torches, the soft sobbing of the puppeteer still huddled on the stage, and the ragged, labored breathing of the big man as he knelt in the grip of the Kingsguard. Aerion's voice was soft, almost conversational, the voice of a man discussing the weather over a cup of wine. It was more terrifying than any scream could have been.
"So," Aerion continued, prodding at his mouth again with his thumb and forefinger, examining the blood that came away, "we'll start by breaking out all of yours."
"No." The word came out of your mouth before you could stop it, a reflex as automatic as breathing, as instinctive as flinching from an open flame. "Aerion, no."
He did not look at you. He was not capable of hearing you, not in this state, not with the blood of a puppet show on his hands and the taste of his own tooth in his mouth. He was looking at the big man the way a child looks at an insect he has caught in a jar. Curious. Utterly without pity.
One of the Kingsguard, the captain with his hand still fisted in the big man's hair, forced his head down toward the stage. Another moved to stand on either side of him, gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place. A third stepped forward, removing his gauntlets one finger at a time, flexing his bare hands with the deliberate precision of a man preparing to perform a task that required both strength and care.
"Hold him still," Aerion said. "I want to watch."
Rhaenyra was sobbing in earnest now, her small body shaking with the force of her terror. She did not understand what was happening. She understood only that her father was on the stage and there was blood on his face and the safe bright world of the puppet show had collapsed into screaming and white cloaks and a big man on his knees who was about to be hurt in a way she had no language for.
"Mama," she wept, "Mama, I want Papa to stop, make Papa stop, please make him stop."
"I can't," you whispered into her hair, and the admission was a wound that would never fully heal. "I can't, sweetling. Mama can't make him stop. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and don't look."
The Kingsguard with the bare hands stepped forward. He was flexing his fingers, working the joints loose, his movements unhurried and methodical. The captain still had the big man's head forced down at the angle required for what was about to happen. The other guards braced themselves, digging their heels into the wooden stage, preparing for the struggle they knew would come.
The big man lifted his head against the pressure of the captain's grip. It was a monumental effort; you could see the muscles of his neck straining, the veins standing out like cords, the sweat cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. He lifted his head, and the torchlight fell full upon his features for the first time.
You saw his face.
Time did not slow. It did not fade. It stopped. It stopped completely, absolutely, as if some vast and terrible hand had reached down from the heavens and seized the mechanism of the world itself and held it motionless. The torches froze mid-flicker. The screaming faded to a hum that existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of hearing. The blood in your veins turned to ice and then to fire and then to something that had no name at all.
You knew that face. You knew the hands. The enormous hands that had lifted you from your mother's deathbed, that had carried you through the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity and disgust, that had wrapped you in a threadbare blanket and held you against his chest while he promised you in a cracking boy's voice that he would always, always have you.
Dunk. He was alive. He was on his knees on a stage in a village called Ashford with a Kingsguard's hand in his hair and another Kingsguard's bare knuckles preparing to break his teeth out of his skull one by one, and he was alive.
"Dunk."
You did not recognize your own voice. It did not sound like a voice at all. It sounded like something that had been torn out of you by the roots, something that had been buried so deep and so long that pulling it free left a bleeding hollow in the center of your chest.
"Dunk."
Louder this time. Louder, and it cracked on the second syllable, cracked like your mother's laugh had cracked, like a bell that had been rung too hard and too long and had nothing left inside it but splinters.
"DUNK."
Time restarted itself with a violence that made your vision swim. The torches flared back to life. The screaming returned, a wave of sound that crashed over you and through you and left you gasping. The Kingsguard hesitated, their hands pausing on their prisoner, their white helms turning toward you with the synchronized precision of hunting dogs catching a scent.
Dunk turned his head. The captain still had his fist twisted in his hair, still had his neck bent at that brutal angle, but Dunk turned his head against that grip with the slow, inexorable force of a continent shifting, and he looked at you.
His eyes found yours across the chaos of the ruined tent. You saw the recognition hit him. Saw it travel through his body like a physical blow, a shock wave that started in his eyes and rippled outward through his shoulders, his chest, his hands. His face went slack with it, the tension draining out of his jaw and his brow, replaced by something that was too raw and too vast to be called surprise. It was disbelief. It was hope, the kind of hope that had been dead for so long its resurrection was indistinguishable from agony. It was joy and grief and guilt and love, all of them crashing together in the space of a single heartbeat.
His mouth moved. Formed the shape of your name. You could not hear it over the screaming, over the roaring of your own blood in your ears, but you saw it, saw the way his lips shaped the syllables he had not spoken in years, the name he had called across a hundred alleys and a hundred dark streets while he searched for you, the name he had whispered to himself in the long nights when he believed you were dead and gone and never coming back.
He surged against the guards holding him. Not fighting to escape now. Fighting to get to you. His massive shoulders bunched and heaved, nearly throwing off the two Kingsguard who were gripping his arms. A third lunged in to reinforce them, his white cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. Dunk did not seem to notice. He did not seem to feel the hands dragging at him or the knees pressing into his back or the captain's fist still grinding into his scalp. He was looking at you and only at you, and he was trying to reach you, trying to cross the impossible distance between the stage and the place where you stood with Rhaenyra in your arms.
You surged forward to meet him. You did not think about it. You did not calculate the odds or weigh the consequences. Your body moved before your mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older than thought, older than fear, older than anything you had learned in the years since they took you from the festival. Your brother was here. Your brother was alive.
Ser Harrold's arm locked around your waist like an iron bar. "Hold still," he snarled, and he was no longer calm now, no longer indifferent. He was struggling to hold you, struggling to keep his grip on a woman who had spent years learning to be still and silent and obedient and had finally, in this single shattering moment, forgotten how.
"Let me go!" The words tore out of your throat with a force that made your vision white out at the edges. Rhaenyra was screaming in your arms, her small fists beating against your shoulders, her voice a thin high wail that you could barely hear over the roaring in your ears. "Let me go, that's my brother, that's my brother, let me GO!"
"Aerion!" You were screaming his name now, the name of the man you loved, the name of the monster on the stage, the name of the only person in this pavilion who had the power to make the nightmare stop. "Aerion, please, please, you have to stop, he's my brother,please, Aerion, PLEASE!"
Aerion turned to look at you.
His face was still smeared with blood, his lip still split and swollen, his violet eyes still bright with the pleasure of the violence he had been orchestrating. But something flickered in their depths when he saw your face, when he registered the raw, unvarnished desperation in your voice. Confusion first. Then irritation, a flicker of the familiar petulance that crossed his features whenever something did not go the way he had planned. And then something else, something that chilled you more than any cruelty could have done.
Something calculating.
"What," he said, and his voice was a blade drawn slowly across a whetstone, "the fuck are you doing? What is she screaming about?"
You could barely form the words. Your throat was raw, your chest heaving, your arms trembling with the effort of holding Rhaenyra while Ser Harrold's grip threatened to crack your ribs. But you forced them out, forced them past the sobs that were building in your chest, forced them into the space between you and the man who held your brother's life in his bloodstained hands.
"He's my brother. He's my brother, Aerion." Your voice cracked on his name, splintered into something that was half a plea and half a prayer. "The brother I told you about. Dunk. The one I thought was dead. The one who raised me. Please. Please don't hurt him. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just please, Aerion, please don't hurt my brother."
Something moved in Aerion's face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed, the bright pleasure of the violence draining out of them, replaced by something harder and colder and infinitely more dangerous. He looked at you, and he looked at Dunk, and he looked back at you, and you could see him putting the pieces together. The brother you had wept for in the dark hours of the night, the brother whose name you had whispered in your sleep, the brother Aerion had forbidden you from ever mentioning again.
The brother who was now on his knees in front of him, bloodied and defiant, the man who had dared to strike a prince of the blood, and his expression closed like a door slamming shut in a winter gale.
"Take her back to her chamber," Aerion said. He was not looking at you anymore. He was looking at Dunk, and his voice was utterly without warmth, utterly without the history that stretched between you, utterly without anything that might have been mistaken for mercy. "Lock the door. No one goes in or out until I give the order."
"No." The word was barely a whisper. Ser Harrold was already dragging you backward, his arm still locked around your waist, his heels digging into the trampled grass of the pavilion floor. "Aerion, no, please, you can't do this."
"Take the child to the nursery," Aerion continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your voice did not exist, as if you were already gone. "She does not need to see any more of this. Make sure she stays there."
"No!" The scream that tore out of you was not a sound. It was a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and a heart full of desperation, and it ripped its way out of your throat and into the torchlit air of the pavilion with a force that made the nearest Kingsguard flinch. "You can't separate us! She's my daughter! She's MY daughter!"
Rhaenyra was shrieking now, a high thin sound that rose above the chaos like a needle sliding into flesh. Her arms were wrapped around your neck so tightly that you could feel her small fingernails digging crescents into your skin, and her legs were locked around your waist, and her face was buried in the curve of your shoulder, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming. "Mama, Mama, don't let them take me, Mama, please, I want to stay with you, Mama, MAMA!"
Ser Harrold was dragging you backward. Another guard, a man in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's household, was trying to untangle Rhaenyra from your arms. His hands were gentle, gentler than you had expected, but that gentleness made it worse somehow, made it more real, made it a kindness that was not a kindness at all. He was murmuring something to Rhaenyra, some meaningless reassurance that neither you nor she could hear over the screaming, and his fingers were prying at her small grip one digit at a time.
"Don't," you sobbed. "Don't take her. Please. Please don't take my daughter."
But your arms were being pulled backward, and your strength was failing, and Rhaenyra's grip was slipping. You felt her fingers lose their hold on your dress. Felt the warmth of her body pulled away from yours. Felt the cold air rush in to fill the space where she had been, and that cold was worse than any physical pain, worse than the bruises blooming on your arm where Ser Harrold held you, worse than the raw burning in your throat from screaming, worse than anything you had endured in the brothel or the alley or the long dark nights when you believed your brother was dead.
"RHAENYRA!"
She was being carried away, still reaching for you over the guard's shoulder, her silver-gold hair bright as a candle flame in the torchlight, her violet eyes wide and streaming with tears. "Mama! I want my mama! Give me back my mama!"
You fought. You fought the way Dunk had fought, with every ounce of strength in your body, with your teeth and your nails and your fury. You twisted in Ser Harrold's grip and raked your nails across his face, felt the skin of his cheek tear beneath your fingers, felt the hot wet rush of his blood against your palm. He cursed and tightened his hold, and something in your side gave way with a sharp bright spike of agony, but you did not stop. You could not stop. Your daughter was being taken from you, your brother was on his knees with a prince's boot on his neck, and the world was ending, and you could not stop.
And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade through silk, a young voice rang out across the pavilion.
"No! Don't touch him!"
Everyone froze. The Kingsguard with his bare hands paused mid-motion, his knuckles inches from Dunk's clenched jaw. The captain's grip on Dunk's hair loosened slightly in surprise. Even Aerion turned, his bloodied mouth twisting into an expression of annoyed bewilderment.
The boy who stepped forward from the chaos of the crowd was small, skinny, with a shaved head that gleamed in the torchlight like a polished stone. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and he moved with the absolute, unshakeable confidence of someone who had never been told that the world did not bend to his will. He was bald and his clothes were the roughspun of a stable boy, dirty and sweat-stained, but he wore them like a prince wearing borrowed silks.
Dunk's voice was a ragged gasp, desperate and afraid in a way it had not been when the Kingsguard were beating him. "You stupid boy! Hold your tongue or they'll hurt you."
The boy did not slow. He did not even glance at Dunk. His eyes were fixed on Aerion, and there was something in them that made the prince's expression flicker with the first hint of uncertainty you had seen all night.
"No, they won't," the boy said, and his voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone stating a fact as immutable as the rising of the sun. "If they do, they'll answer to my father."
He stepped past the Kingsguard as if they were not there, as if the white cloaks and the white armor and the drawn swords were no more substantial than morning mist. He stopped directly in front of Aerion, this small bald boy in dirty clothes, and he lifted his chin and looked the prince full in the face.
"Let go of him," the boy commanded. "Wate, Yorkel, do as I say."
And the Kingsguard obeyed.
The captain released Dunk's hair. The other guards stepped back, their hands falling away from his arms and shoulders, their white helms inclining slightly in gestures of deference that stopped your heart in your chest. They knew this boy. They knew him, and they obeyed him, and that could only mean one thing.
Aerion stared at the boy. His violet eyes narrowed, studying the shaved head, the dirty clothes, the small defiant face that was upturned to his own. And then, slowly, recognition dawned across his bloodied features like a sluggish sunrise. It was followed immediately by annoyance, a deep and profound irritation that seemed to cut through even the pleasure he had been taking in the violence moments before.
"You impudent little rat," Aerion said. His voice dripped with contempt, but beneath it lurked something else, something that sounded almost like wariness. "What's happened to your hair?"
The boy did not flinch. He did not blink. He looked at Aerion with the steady, unblinking gaze of someone who had spent his entire life watching and learning and understanding things that others missed, and when he spoke, his voice carried the unmistakable weight of royal blood.
"I cut it off, brother," he said. "I didn't want to look like you."
Brother. The word landed in the center of the pavilion like a stone dropped into still water. Brother. This boy, this small bald boy in stable clothes, was Aerion's brother. Which meant he was Prince Aegon Targaryen, the youngest of Prince Maekar's sons, the one you had glimpsed occasionally in the corridors of Summerhall, the one who had looked at you like you were a puzzle he was trying to solve.
And he had just intervened to save your brother's life. The revelation halted the attack instantly. The Kingsguard could not carry out Aerion's orders now. Not against a man who was connected, through his squire, to the royal family. Not against a man who was protected by a prince of the blood, however young and however bald and however inexplicably dressed in the roughspun of a stable hand. The captain stepped back further, his white cloak settling around him like folded wings, and the other guards followed suit, leaving Dunk kneeling alone on the stage.
Aerion's face was a study in frustration. The pleasure had drained out of him entirely now, replaced by a seething, impotent fury that he could not express without defying his own brother, his own blood, in front of half a dozen witnesses. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The blood from his split lip still dripped down his chin, and his violet eyes were dark with a rage that had no outlet.
But he was a prince, and he knew the rules, and striking a man who was connected to the royal family was a crime that even he could not simply burn his way out of.
"Take him to the cells," Aerion said finally, and his voice was flat and cold and utterly drained of the pleasure that had animated it before. "He struck a prince of the blood. That crime remains regardless of whose squire the little rat has chosen to become. He will await trial and judgment, and lock her in her chamber."
Ser Harrold hauled you backward through the ruins of the pavilion. Your legs gave out beneath you, and he dragged you the rest of the way, your heels scraping furrows in the trampled grass, your head lolling against his shoulder, your voice reduced to a raw and wordless keening that did not stop. You passed overturned benches. You passed torn silk and scattered cushions and a child's abandoned shoe.
The last thing you saw before the tent flap closed behind you was Aerion. He was still standing on the stage, his red tunic splattered with blood, his face a mask of cold, distant contemplation. He was not looking at you. He was looking at the place where Dunk had disappeared, and there was something in his expression that you had never seen before. Something that went beyond jealousy, beyond possessiveness, beyond the casual cruelty of a man who had never been denied anything.
He looked like a dragon counting its hoard, and finding a single coin out of place.
—
The door slammed shut behind you with a finality that echoed through your bones.
You had screamed until your voice gave out. You had beaten your fists against the iron banded oak until your knuckles split and bled, leaving dark smears on the wood that looked like accusations. You had thrown yourself at the door again and again, your shoulder bruising, your strength ebbing, until finally your legs had given way beneath you and you had slid to the cold stone floor with your back against the unforgiving wood and your face buried in your bleeding hands.
Rhaenyra was gone. Dunk was gone. Everyone you had ever loved had been ripped away from you in the space of a single night, and you were locked in a borrowed chamber in a borrowed castle with nothing but the silence and the dark and the terrible, circling thoughts that would not let you rest.
You pressed your forehead against your knees and tried to breathe.The hours crawled past like wounded animals dragging themselves toward death. You did not move from your place against the door. You did not lie down on the bed, though it was soft and wide and covered in Ashford's finest linens. You did not drink the water that had been left on the side table, though your throat was raw and burning from screaming. You simply sat, curled into yourself, and waited.
For Aerion. For news. For something, anything, that would tell you what was going to happen next. You thought about the look on Dunk's face when he recognized you. The shock. The joy. The desperate, agonized love. What must he have thought? What must he have assumed about you, about your life, about the choices that had led you to this place?
The shame of it burned in your chest like swallowed fire.
You did not know how long you sat there. It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness of the chamber, with the candles unlit and the fire unbuilt and the only light coming from the pale sliver of moon that crept through the narrow window high in the wall. But eventually, eventually, you heard the sound you had been dreading and hoping for in equal measure.
Footsteps in the corridor. Boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried, the particular cadence of a man who knew that the world would wait for him. The jingle of a sword at the hip. The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a key turning in a lock.
The door swung inward, and Aerion Targaryen stepped into the room.
He had cleaned the blood from his face since you last saw him. His lip was still swollen. His silver gold hair had been combed back from his face, still damp from washing. He had changed his clothes; replaced by a simple black doublet that made his pale skin look almost luminous in the moonlight. He looked almost calm. Almost controlled. But his violet eyes were too bright, too sharp, the eyes of a man who was holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads.
He closed the door behind him. You heard the lock click into place.
"My dragon," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, raw and broken from screaming. You tried to rise to your feet, but your legs would not hold you, so you remained on the floor, your back against the wall, your hands still stained with your own blood. "Aerion, please. Please tell me what's happening. My brother. Where is my brother? Is he all right? What are they going to do to him?"
The change that came over Aerion's face was instantaneous and terrifying. The careful mask of composure cracked like ice hit by a hammer. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His hands, which had been relaxed at his sides, curled slowly into fists.
"I come to you," he said, and his voice was a blade being drawn from its sheath, slow and deliberate and full of promise, "after being attacked in front of half the nobility of the Reach. My lip is split open. My tooth is loose in my skull. My dignity has been trampled by some hedge knight with dirt under his fingernails and hay in his hair. And the first words out of your mouth are not 'Are you all right, my prince?' Not 'Let me tend your wounds, my love.' Not a single word of comfort or concern for me, the man who saved you from a brothel, the father of your child, the prince who has kept you fed and clothed and protected for years."
He took a step toward you. Then another. His shadow fell across you like a shroud, blocking out the pale moonlight, plunging you into darkness.
"Your first words," he said, and his voice was rising now, climbing toward a register you had learned to fear, "are about him. A stranger. A man who struck me. A man who loosened my tooth and spilled my blood in front of the Kingsguard. That is who you ask about. That is who you care about. Not me. Not your prince. Not the father of your child. Him."
"He's not a stranger," you said, and your voice was barely a whisper. You knew you should stop. You knew you should placate him, soothe him, tell him everything he wanted to hear. That was what you had done for years, what you had become so skilled at doing. But you could not. Not tonight. Not with Dunk's face still burned into your memory like a brand. "He's my brother, Aerion. He's my brother. He raised me. He protected me, and you have him locked in a cell like a criminal. Please. Please, just tell me he's all right. Just tell me you haven't hurt him."
Aerion stared at you for a long moment. The torch from the corridor outside cast his shadow long and dark across the floor, stretching toward you like a grasping hand. His breathing was audible in the silence, harsh and uneven, the breathing of a man who was losing a battle with his own rage.
"You love him," he said finally. The words were flat, toneless, utterly without inflection. "This brother of yours. This hedge knight with his dirty hands and his dirty hair. You love him more than you love me."
"That's not true," you said, and it was the truth and it was a lie and it was everything in between. "I love you, Aerion. You know I love you. But he's my brother. He's my blood. I thought he was dead. I mourned him for years. And now he's here, and he's alive, and I just want to know that he's safe. That's all. I just want to know that he's safe. Please."
"Safe." Aerion repeated the word as if it were a foreign language, a concept he had heard described but never experienced. "Safe. You want to know if the man who struck me is safe. You want to know if the man who humiliated me in front of my family and my father is safe."
He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something breaking.
"You're mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintering into something that was half rage and half desperation. "You have been mine since the night I bought you. I paid fifty gold dragons for you. I burned down a brothel for you. I gave you a home, a place in my household, a daughter who bears my name. I have given you everything. Everything. And you stand there, bleeding on my floor, asking about another man."
"I'm not standing," you whispered, and you did not know why that was the detail you chose to focus on. He crossed the distance between you in three swift strides. His hand closed around your arm, hauling you upright with a strength that would leave bruises, and you cried out as the blood rushed back to your legs and the pain in your side flared white hot.
"You are mine," he said again, and his face was inches from yours, his violet eyes blazing with a fire you had seen directed at others but never, never at you. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this complete and absolute absence of restraint. "Say it. Say you're mine."
"I'm yours," you gasped. His grip on your arm was agony, his fingers digging into the bruises Ser Harrold had left, and tears were streaming down your face. "Aerion, please, you're hurting me."
"Good." He shook you, once, hard enough that your head snapped back and hit the stone wall behind you. Stars burst across your vision. "Good. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll remember who you belong to. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll stop asking about other men. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll finally understand that the only way you leave me is in a shroud."
"My brother," you sobbed. "He's my brother. Not another man. My brother. Please, Aerion, please try to understand."
"I understand perfectly." His free hand came up to grip your chin, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I understand that you have spent years telling me you loved me while you dreamed of someone else. I understand that the moment he appeared, you forgot everything I have done for you. I understand that you are a whore I pulled from a brothel, and no matter how many silk dresses I put on you, no matter how much of myself I pour into you, you will never, ever stop being what you are."
The words hit you like physical blows. Each one was a fist to the gut, a slap to the face, a knife slipped between your ribs. You had known, intellectually, that this was how he saw you. You had always known. But hearing it spoken aloud, hearing it thrown at you like an accusation, like a crime you had committed against him simply by existing, was something else entirely.
"Aerion," you whispered, and your voice was so small, so broken, that you barely recognized it as your own. "I have never been unfaithful to you. I have never looked at another man. I have never wanted anyone but you. He is my brother. My brother. Why can't you understand that?"
"Because I don't care!" He screamed the words directly into your face, his spittle flecking your cheeks, his breath hot and sour with wine and blood. "I don't care who he is! I don't care if he's your brother or your father or your long lost lover! The moment you chose him over me, the moment you screamed his name instead of mine, the moment you fought my guards and clawed Ser Harrold's face to try to reach him, you made your choice! And now you will live with it!"
His hand released your chin and came across your face with a crack that seemed to echo off the stone walls.
The backhand caught you across the cheekbone, hard enough to snap your head to the side, hard enough to send a spray of blood from your already split lip, hard enough that your legs gave out beneath you entirely. You fell. You did not fall gracefully, did not fall the way women fell in the songs Dunk used to tell you, floating down like petals on a breeze. You fell like a sack of grain, heavy and graceless, your hip striking the stone floor with a jolt of pain that made you gasp, your palms scraping raw against the cold flagstones, your already injured side screaming in protest as you landed.
You lay there for a moment, stunned. The taste of blood filled your mouth, copper and salt and something that might have been despair. The world swam in and out of focus. The moonlight from the window seemed very far away, a distant silver promise of a world that existed somewhere beyond this room, beyond this night, beyond the man who was standing over you with his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.
Then he was on top of you. His weight pressed you into the cold stone floor, heavy and immovable, the weight of a man who had trained with sword and shield and lance, the weight of a prince who had never been denied anything in his life. His knees pinned your thighs. One hand caught both of your wrists and forced them above your head, pressing them into the stone with a grip that made your fingers go numb. His other hand was at your throat, not squeezing, not yet, just resting there, a reminder, a threat, a promise.
"You're my whore," he said, and his voice was a growl, low and guttural and utterly without the cultured refinement he wore like armor in the daylight. "Mine. You have been mine since the night I bought you, and you will be mine until the day you die. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?"
"Get off me," you gasped. Your voice was barely audible, strangled by the hand at your throat and the weight on your chest. "Aerion, please, get off me, I can't breathe."
"It means," he continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your words were less than nothing, as if your voice did not exist in any way that mattered, "that I own you. Your body. Your heart. Your soul. Every breath you take, you take because I allow it. Every night you sleep in a warm bed, you sleep there because I permit it. Every moment you spend with our daughter, you spend because I have chosen to let you. And the only way you leave me, the only way you ever leave me, is if you are dead. Do you understand? Dead."
He was tearing at your dress as he spoke, the silk that he had given you, the dress he had chosen, the dress you had worn to the puppet show, the dress Rhaenyra's tears had soaked through. You heard the fabric rip, felt the cold air on your skin, and you found what remained of your strength and pushed against him. Your hands were still pinned above your head, but you bucked your hips, twisted your body, tried to throw him off the way Dunk had thrown off the Kingsguard.
It was useless. It was always useless. He was stronger than you, heavier than you, and he had the advantage of gravity and rage and years of training in violence that you had never received. He pressed you back down against the stone, and his hand left your throat to grip your jaw, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes.
"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine. Say you belong to me. Say that no one else matters. Not your brother. Not anyone. Say it."
You did not say it. You could not say it. The words were locked in your throat, trapped behind the tears and the blood and the terrible, crushing weight of what was happening to you.
You tried to squeeze your legs shut, but his knee drove between them, forcing them wide. He was hard and the sight of his cock made your stomach turn.
"Look at it," he hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head forward. "Look at what you made me do. This is your fault. If you had just obeyed—"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. He pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, already sore and swollen from the first time, and you whimpered, a high, broken sound that seemed to please him. He held there, just barely breaching you, letting you feel the pressure, the promise of invasion.
"Please," you whispered, your voice cracked and raw. "Please, Aerion, please don't—"
He thrust.
The sound you made was not a scream. It was something worse, a choked, guttural sob that tore from your throat as he buried himself inside you in one brutal push. The angle was wrong, too deep, too dry despite the precum already coating your thighs. You felt every ridge and vein of his cock as it forced its way deeper, splitting you open, claiming space that did not want him.
He paused, buried to the hilt, and let out a low groan that was almost human. Almost tender. Then he began to move.
Not fast. Not yet. He fucked you slowly, deliberately, with a cruelty that made every inch of the motion deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in with excruciating leisure, watching your face contort with each stroke. His eyes were locked on yours, challenging you to look away.
You did. You turned your head, pressing your cheek against the cold stone, staring at a crack in the floor until your vision blurred. But he would not allow that. He grabbed your jaw, forced your face back to his.
"Watch," he commanded. "Watch me take what is mine."
His pace increased. The slow, torturous rhythm gave way to a sharp, punishing fucking that drove the air from your lungs with every slam of his hips. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed off the walls, mingling with your ragged breaths and his grunts. He leaned down, his chest pressing against yours, and bit your shoulder, not a kiss, a bite, hard enough to break skin. You cried out, and he licked the blood, humming in satisfaction.
"That's it," he whispered against your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "Make sound for me. Let the whole castle hear how much you hate it. Let them know who you belong to."
He drove deeper, harder, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that made your back arch despite yourself. A spark of unwanted pleasure shot through your pelvis, and you bit your lip so hard you tasted copper. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He slowed down, grinding against that same spot, watching your body betray you as your hips began to rock in counterpoint to his thrusts.
"There she is," he breathed, almost reverent. "There's the whore underneath. You can't hide her from me. She wants this. She needs this."
"No," you gasped, but your body said yes, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Hot shame flooded through you, hotter than the pain, as your cunt began to slick with something that was not blood. He felt it too, he groaned, his rhythm faltering, his grip on your hips tightening.
"I'm going to fill you," he snarled, his composure cracking. "I'm going to pour every drop of my seed into this worthless hole until you're pregnant with my heir, a son this time, and then I'll do it again. And again. And—"
He came without warning, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he shoved himself as deep as he could go, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing inside you. You felt the hot flood of his cum, felt it spill out around him, felt it mix with the blood and your own unwanted wetness. He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the stone, his breath hot and ragged against your neck.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then he shifted, pulling out with a wet sound that made you flinch, and rolled onto his back beside you. The moonlight had moved, illuminating his face now haunted gleam in his violet eyes that looked almost like regret.
But you knew better. You knew he would do it again. And again. And again. Because in his world, you were already dead. You just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
He did not speak. Neither did you. You lay on the cold stone floor with your torn dress twisted around your body and your wrists still aching from his grip and your thighs slick with the evidence of what he had done, and you stared at the ceiling, and you thought of nothing at all.
After a long time Aerion rose to his feet. He straightened his clothes with mechanical precision, adjusting his doublet, smoothing his hair back from his face. He did not look at you. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He did not speak a single word of apology or comfort or explanation.
"Your brother will stand trial," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, flat and cold and utterly devoid of the passion that had consumed him moments before. "For striking a prince of the blood. The sentence will be severe. How severe depends entirely on you."
He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his back to you.
"If you try to see him again," he said, "if you try to contact him, if you so much as speak his name in my presence, I will have him executed. Do you understand? His life is in your hands. Remember that."
The remainder of the night passed in darkness. You did not move from the floor. You could not move from the floor. The torn silk of your dress had dried stiff and crusted against your skin, and you had not bothered to cover yourself. There was no one to see. There was no one to care. The moonlight crawled across the stone floor inch by inch, and you watched it the way a corpse might watch the shifting of its own shroud, with a detachment that went beyond despair into something vast and empty and still.
Morning came grey and cold through the narrow window. The sky outside was the color of old iron, heavy with clouds that had not yet decided whether to rain. You heard the castle waking around you. Footsteps in the corridor. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Servants calling to one another in voices too muffled to understand. The tourney, you remembered dimly. The tourney was still happening. Lord Ashford's daughter still needed her champion. The world was still turning, indifferent to the ruin of your life.
Someone brought food. You heard the door unlock, heard the tray scrape against the stone as it was pushed inside, heard the door lock again. You did not get up to look at it. The smell of bread and broth turned your stomach. You had not eaten since the puppet show, since before the puppet show, since the garden when Rhaenyra had found the pink flower and you had believed, foolishly and desperately, that everything would be all right.
The morning wore on. The light shifted. The clouds outside the window thickened and darkened and began to spit a thin, miserable drizzle that streaked the glass like tears.
And then, sometime in the afternoon, you heard the commotion.
It started as a distant murmur, a disturbance somewhere in the lower levels of the castle that grew louder and more urgent as it climbed toward your door. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of something metallic hitting stone. You lifted your head from the floor for the first time in hours, your neck aching, your vision swimming. Something was happening. Something was wrong.
The door crashed open. It was not Aerion who entered first but a maester, an old man in grey robes with a heavy chain around his neck and blood on his sleeves up to the elbows. Behind him came two guards, household men in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's service, carrying between them a litter on which lay a figure you recognized only by the silver gold of his hair.
Aerion. He was unconscious. His face was nearly unrecognizable. His lip had been split anew, a fresh gash that ran up toward his cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purple and black and glistening with some kind of salve. His chest was bare beneath a makeshift bandage that wrapped around his ribs, and the bandage was soaked through with blood, bright red and seeping, the color of life escaping. His right arm lay at an angle that was not natural, and his breathing was shallow and labored and made a wet, rattling sound that turned your stomach even as it ignited something else in your chest. Something you did not want to name. Something you did not want to feel.
You scrambled backward on the floor until your shoulder blades hit the wall. Your torn dress bunched around your knees. Your hands came up in front of you, a defensive gesture that was pure instinct, the instinct of a woman who had spent the night being broken and had no more pieces left to give.
"What," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable. "What happened? What is this?"
The maester did not look at you. He was directing the guards to lay the litter on the bed, his hands already reaching for the blood soaked bandages, already issuing orders about hot water and clean linen and milk of the poppy. But one of the guards, a young man whose face was pale and shocked and streaked with someone else's blood, paused long enough to answer.
"Trial of the Seven," he said, and the words meant nothing to you. "The prince demanded it. Against the hedge knight."
"Trial of the Seven?" The phrase was foreign, nonsensical, a collection of syllables that refused to resolve into meaning. "What are you talking about? What trial? What hedge knight?"
The maester looked up from his work at last. "The hedge knight," he said, and his voice was clipped and efficient, the voice of a man who did not have time for explanations. "Ser Duncan the Tall. The hedge knight demanded a trial by combat. The prince escalated it to a Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights in the lists. The hedge knight's side won, but the prince was wounded. Gravely wounded. We have done what we can for the immediate injuries, but when he regained consciousness briefly, he insisted, quite forcefully, that he be brought to you. He said he wanted you to be his primary caretaker."
The words washed over you in a tide of incomprehensible information. Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights. The hedge knight's side won. Dunk's side. Dunk had won. Your brother had won. Your brother was alive and he had won his trial and he was free, he must be free, because if the hedge knight's side had won the trial then the gods had judged him innocent.
But Aerion was on your bed with his ribs crushed and his arm broken and his face beaten into something barely human, and he had asked for you. Even after what he had done to you on this very floor. Even after the things he had said, the things he had called you, the violence he had visited upon your body. He had regained consciousness long enough to demand that you, and no one else, be the one to care for him.
You stared at the maester. The maester stared back at you, and something in his expression softened, just slightly, at whatever he saw in your face. Perhaps it was the bruises on your wrists. Perhaps it was the torn dress. Perhaps it was the way you sat huddled against the wall like a wounded animal that had learned to expect only more pain.
"I have done what I can for the immediate wounds," the maester said again, more slowly this time. "The prince will live, though his recovery will be long and painful. But he needs constant care. Someone to change his bandages, to administer his medicine, to watch for fever. He asked for you. Given his condition and his royal status, we are not inclined to refuse him."
You looked at the figure on the bed. The man who had raped you on the stone floor less than a day ago. The father of your daughter. The monster you loved. The prince who had promised to execute your brother if you so much as spoke his name. He lay unconscious and broken, his breath rattling in his chest, and you were being told that you would be his caretaker. That you would sit by his bedside and change his bandages and mop his brow and listen to him breathe.
The absurd cruelty of it was almost beautiful, in its way. A kind of poetry written in blood and bruises and the particular viciousness of men who believed they owned the women they had purchased.
"Leave us," you said, and your voice did not sound like your own. It sounded like the voice of someone much older, someone who had survived worse things than this and would survive worse things still. "I will care for him."
The maester hesitated. "My lady, there are instructions I must give you regarding the dressing of his wounds. The risk of infection is significant, and the milk of the poppy must be administered precisely. Too much will stop his breathing. Too little and the pain will be excruciating. Do you understand?"
"I understand," you said, though you understood nothing. You understood only that your brother was alive and free, and the man who had destroyed you was lying broken on your bed, and you were supposed to heal him. You were supposed to sit beside him and tend his wounds and keep him alive so that he could continue to own you, continue to threaten you, continue to hold your brother's life in his hands like a coin he might spend on a whim.
The maester gave you his instructions. You listened with half an ear, nodding in the appropriate places, filing the information away in a part of your mind that was still functioning, still capable of processing data and making decisions. Change the bandages every four hours. Watch for red streaks radiating from the wounds. Administer the milk of the poppy in doses measured by the small copper cup on the bedside table. If he wakes, give him water. If he develops a fever, send for the maester immediately.
And then they were gone, the maester and the guards, and the door was closed, and you were alone with him.
You stood in the center of the room for a long time, staring at the bed. At the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bloodied bandages. At the hand that lay limp and pale against the silk sheets, the hand that had struck you across the face, the hand that had pinned your wrists above your head, the hand that had held your chin and forced you to look into his eyes while he destroyed you.
You could let him die.
The thought came to you fully formed, as if it had been waiting in the back of your mind all along, biding its time. You could let him die. The maester had left you with the milk of the poppy and precise instructions about dosage. You could administer too much, or too little. You could neglect to change his bandages and let the infection take hold. You could hold a pillow over his face while he slept and press down until the ragged breathing stopped forever. There was no one else in the room. There were no guards at your door, not anymore. You could end this. You could end him. You could free yourself and your daughter and your brother with a single act of will.
You looked at the copper cup on the bedside table. You looked at the pillow beneath his head. You looked at your own hands, still bruised, still crusted with your own blood, still capable of doing what needed to be done.
And then you crossed the room, and you sat down in the chair beside his bed, and you began to prepare the first dose of milk of the poppy with hands that did not tremble at all.
If you let him die now, his father would investigate. There would be questions. There had been a maester here, and guards, and they had seen you alone with him. If Aerion died under your care, the blame would fall on you. You would be executed, or worse. And Rhaenyra would have no mother at all.
Not yet. But the knowledge was there now, a small cold seed planted in the dark soil of your heart. Not yet. But someday, perhaps. Someday, if the opportunity presented itself, if the circumstances aligned, if you could be certain of escaping the consequences. Someday, you might be free of him.
—
The days that followed blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. You were not permitted to leave the room. Aerion made that clear the first time you asked, your voice carefully neutral, your eyes on the floor. He had been awake for perhaps an hour, propped up on pillows that you had arranged behind his back with your own hands, his broken arm splinted and bound, his ribs wrapped tight in fresh linen. His face was still a ruin of purple and black and sickly yellow green, his lip still split, his eye still swollen half-shut. But his voice had lost none of its edge.
"Leave?" He had laughed, a humorless sound that turned into a wince as his ribs protested. "Why would you need to leave? Everything you require is here. Food will be brought. Water for washing. Fresh bandages from the maester. You have no reason to go anywhere."
"Aerion, please. I only want to see Rhaenyra. Just for an hour. Just to hold her and know she's all right. She must be so frightened. She's only two years old. She doesn't understand why her mother disappeared."
His expression had darkened, a cloud passing over the sun. "The child is fine. She is being cared for by the nurses. She does not need you hovering over her like a hen with one chick. What she needs is a father who is not an invalid, and what I need is a caretaker who does not spend every waking moment asking to leave."
"Aerion..."
"Enough." The word was a door slamming shut. "You will stay here. You will tend to my wounds. You will keep me company. You will not leave this room unless I give you permission. Is that understood?"
So you stayed. You woke when he woke, which was often, his sleep broken by pain and fever and the strange, feverish dreams that made him thrash and cry out in the darkness. You changed his bandages with the careful precision the maester had taught you, peeling back the old linen, examining the wounds for signs of infection, applying the salves and poultices with gentle fingers. You fed him broth when he could eat, spooning it into his ruined mouth one careful measure at a time. You helped him with the bedpan when he needed it, a humiliation that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go cold, as if his body's weakness were a personal insult you had somehow engineered.
You did all of this in silence, for the most part. He did not want conversation. He did not want to be soothed or coddled or reassured. The man who had craved praise like a drug, who had turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, was gone. In his place was a creature of pure, distilled bitterness, a man whose humiliation had curdled inside him until it became something toxic.
He had lost. That was the core of it, the wound beneath the wounds. He had been beaten by a hedge knight in front of half the nobility of the Reach, and then he had demanded a Trial of the Seven, the most sacred and dramatic form of combat the gods permitted, and he had lost that too. His side had lost. The gods themselves had declared against him, had declared in favor of the dirt-smeared giant who had loosened his tooth and spilled his blood and stolen his dignity. Aerion Targaryen, the prince who had burned a man alive for making a joke, the prince who had broken a puppeteer's fingers for telling the wrong story, the prince who believed with every fiber of his being that he was a dragon in human form, had been brought low by a nameless hedge knight with hay in his hair and dirt under his nails.
And you, who had witnessed the beginning of that humiliation, had become the vessel into which he poured all his bile.
"I should have you hanged for being related to that oaf." His hand shot out and closed around your wrist, hard enough to make you freeze. "Why would a brother fight like that? Why would a brother look at a sister like that? Tell me the truth. Was he your lover before he was your brother? Did you share a bed in the slums of Flea Bottom, before I found you?"
The accusation was so vile, so utterly, grotesquely wrong, that for a moment you could not speak at all. You could only stare at him, at his swollen face and his blazing eyes and the jealousy that was consuming him from the inside out like a fire that would not be quenched.
"He is my brother," you said, and your voice was quiet and steady and utterly without the rage that was boiling in your chest. "My brother. My blood.Nothing more. Nothing less. I have never lain with him. I have never wanted to. The very thought is disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to you too."
Aerion held your gaze for a long moment. Then he released your wrist and turned his face away.
"Finish the bandage," he said, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.
Sometimes, rarely, they brought Rhaenyra to see you. It was never for long. Ten minutes, fifteen, never more than half an hour. A servant would bring her to the door, and she would run across the room on her unsteady two year old legs, bewildered relief of a child who did not understand why her mother had vanished from her life. You would scoop her up and hold her against your chest and breathe in the smell of her, that particular sweetness of soap and milk and sunshine that you had missed like a severed limb.
"Mama," she would say, her small hands patting your face, your hair, your shoulders, as if reassuring herself you were real. "Mama, where did you go? I looked for you. I cried and cried but you didn't come."
"Mama was taking care of your father," you would say, and your voice would be steady even though your heart was breaking. "Your father is very sick, sweetling. He needs Mama's help. But Mama loves you. Mama thinks about you every moment. Do you understand? Every single moment."
She would nod, her small face solemn, and then she would launch into a breathless account of everything she had done since she saw you last. The bird she had seen on the windowsill. The game the nurses had taught her. The dreams she had dreamed. You drank in every word like water in a desert, memorizing the cadence of her voice, the animation of her expressions, the way her tiny hands moved when she was telling a particularly exciting part.
And then Aerion would stir in the bed behind you, and the servant would step forward, and Rhaenyra would be lifted from your arms.
"No," you would say, every time, reaching for her even as the servant pulled her away. "Please, just a few more minutes. Just a little longer. She's only just arrived."
"Prince's orders," the servant would say, and the door would close, and you would be alone with him again.
The nights were the worst.
During the day, Aerion was mostly manageable. Irritable, demanding, prone to dark silences and darker accusations, but manageable. You could distract yourself with the work of caring for him, the constant rhythm of bandages and medicine and meals. You could count the hours until the next time Rhaenyra might be brought to you. You could lose yourself in the small, finite tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind from wandering to places it should not go.
But at night, when the candles burned low and the fire died to embers and the only sound was the soft, labored rhythm of his breathing, the monster in him stirred.
It started on the fourth night. You had been dozing in the chair beside his bed, your neck cricked at an awkward angle, your body aching for the comfort of a proper mattress. You were dreaming of the garden, of Rhaenyra's laughter, of pink flowers crushed beneath bare feet. And then a hand closed around your forearm, and you were jolted awake with a gasp.
Aerion was looking at you from the bed. His eyes were fever bright in the near darkness, and his hand was hot and dry against your skin. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, and you could see the bandages around his ribs, the splint on his arm, the bruises that spread across his torso like storm clouds. But you could also see, in the shadows beneath the blanket, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
"Come here," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough with pain and desire in equal measure. "I need you."
"Aerion," you said carefully, "you're injured. The maester said you need to rest. You could reopen your wounds. You could..."
"I don't care what the maester said." His grip on your arm tightened. "I've been lying in this bed for four days. I've lost everything. My pride. The hedge knight walks free, and I am trapped in this room like a cripple. The least you can do," and his voice hardened on the words, "is give me this."
"You're not well. Please, just wait until you're stronger. I promise, when you're healed..."
"When I am healed, I will take what I want anyway." He pulled you closer, and you could smell the sourness of his breath, the stale sweat of his unwashed body, the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy that still lingered on his tongue. "But I want it now. I have spent four days flat on my back like a turtle overturned, watching you flutter around me with your careful hands and your careful voice and your careful eyes that never quite meet mine. I know what you think of me. I know what you think when you look at me. You think I'm a monster. You think I got what I deserved."
"No," you whispered, but it was a lie and you both knew it.
"Yes," he said. "You do. And I don't care. You can hate me all you like, in the privacy of your own mind. But you are mine.Now. Come. Here."
He could not be rough with you, not in his condition. His broken arm lay useless at his side, and his bandaged ribs prevented any sudden movement. But he did not need to be rough to make you feel the weight of your captivity. He directed you with his voice, that voice you had once praised and soothed and loved, telling you where to touch him, how to move, what he wanted from you. He could not take you the way he had on the stone floor, could not pin you down and force himself inside you while you sobbed and pushed at his chest. But he could make you take him in your mouth while he lay back against the pillows with his eyes half closed and his hand tangled in your hair. He could make you straddle him carefully, carefully, moving with the slow precision his injuries demanded, while his one good hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise.
"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with pleasure and pain and the strange, twisted satisfaction of ownership. "That's my good girl. My sweet girl. You know what I need. You always know what I need."
"Now you should rest." He was already drifting, the exertion combined with the milk of the poppy pulling him back toward unconsciousness.
"You're the only one," he mumbled, his voice slurring with sleep. "The only one who stays. The only one who doesn't leave. Don't leave me. Promise you won't leave."
You did not promise. You dried your hands on a cloth and returned to the chair beside his bed, and you watched him sleep, and you thought about the copper cup of milk of the poppy on the bedside table, and you thought about what it would be like to be free.
—
The servant came for you on the seventh day. You were sitting in the chair beside Aerion's bed, your hands idle in your lap for the first time in what felt like years. He was sleeping deeply, the milk of the poppy dragging him down into a place where even his dreams could not reach him.
The door opened without a knock. You turned, expecting another servant with a tray of food, another maester with fresh bandages, another summons from the nurses saying Rhaenyra was crying for you and would not be soothed. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a servant you recognized.
"Prince Maekar requests your presence," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral, the voice of a woman delivering a message she did not fully understand. "You are to come with me immediately."
You stared at her. Prince Maekar. The man who had called you a whore to your face, who had forbidden you from speaking to his children, who had looked at you for years with an expression of cold, unwavering contempt. He had never once spoken to you directly, had never acknowledged your existence except as a problem to be managed. And now he was summoning you?
"Prince Maekar," you repeated, and your voice came out uncertain, almost afraid. "Why would Prince Maekar want to see me?"
The servant's expression did not change. "I was not told, my lady. Only that you are to come at once. Prince Aerion is sleeping. He will not miss you. Please, follow me."
You looked back at the bed. Aerion's chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. His good hand was curled loosely on the pillow beside his face, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. If you left and he woke to find you gone, there would be consequences. There were always consequences. But the servant was watching you with her sharp grey eyes, and something in her manner told you that this was not a request. This was an order, delivered with the full authority of the man who ruled Summerhall.
You rose from the chair. Your legs were unsteady beneath you, your body still aching from the nights of sleeping in chairs and on pallets, from the strain of lifting and turning and tending a man who outweighed you by half.
The castle was quiet at this hour. The afternoon light slanted through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the stone floors. You had not been outside Aerion's room in seven days. The world seemed larger than you remembered. Brighter. More dangerous.
The servant led you through corridors you did not recognize, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, until you stood before a heavy oak door banded with iron. She knocked twice, a sharp, deliberate rap that echoed in the silence.
"The woman is here, my prince," she said.
A voice from within, muffled by the door, said something you could not make out. The servant pushed the door open and gestured for you to enter.
You stepped inside. The room was small, sparsely furnished. A table. A few chairs. A narrow window that looked out over the castle's eastern wall. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadow and flickering orange light. And standing near the window, one hand braced against the wall for support, a thick piece of wood tucked under his other arm to hold him upright, was your brother.
Dunk.
You stopped in the doorway as if you had walked into a wall. Your heart seized in your chest. Your breath caught in your throat. Your hands flew to your mouth, pressing against your lips as if to hold in the sound that was trying to escape, a sound that was half sob and half scream and half something that had no name at all.
He looked terrible. His face was a mess of bruises, purple and black and yellow-green, one eye swollen nearly shut, a gash across his cheekbone held closed with clumsy stitches. His lip was split in two places. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the piece of wood under his right arm was a crutch, crude and hastily made, the kind a maester might fashion for a patient who refused to stay in bed. He was leaning heavily on it, his massive frame listing to one side, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion and pain. He looked like a man who had been through a war and had only barely survived.
"Y/N," he said, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he was eight years old and lifting you from your mother's deathbed. Cracked. Hoarse. Full of a desperate, aching tenderness that made your chest splinter into a thousand pieces.
One moment you were standing in the doorway with your hands pressed to your mouth, and the next you were in his arms, your face buried in his chest, your shoulders shaking with sobs you had been holding back for years. His good arm wrapped around you, pulling you against him, and you felt the crutch fall away, felt him stagger and brace himself against the wall so he would not fall. He was so big. He had always been so big. Even broken and bruised and barely able to stand, he surrounded you, enveloped you, made you feel for the first time in longer than you could remember that you were safe.
"I've got you," he said into your hair, and his voice was breaking, splintering, cracking into pieces that sounded like your mother's laugh and your father's name and every promise he had ever made you. "I've got you. I've always got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I looked for you. I looked everywhere. They told me you were dead. They told me they found your body in the river. They said you were burned beyond recognition. I believed them. Gods forgive me, I believed them."
"I didn't know," you sobbed into his chest. Your fingers were twisted in his tunic, gripping the rough wool as if he might disappear if you let go. "I didn't know they told you that. I thought you were still looking. I thought you would find me. I waited for you. Every night, I waited for you. I never stopped believing you would come."
"I'm sorry, i believed them. I believed you were dead, and something inside me died with you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little sister. I should have kept looking. I should have known. I should have..."
"Stop." You pulled back just enough to look up at his face, at the tears that were cutting tracks through the blood and the bruises. "Stop apologizing. You searched for me. You believed what they told you. Any man would have believed it. I don't blame you. I have never blamed you. I only ever wanted you to know I was alive. I tried to send word. I tried so many times. But Aerion..."
You stopped. The name hung in the air between you like a curse. Dunk's expression darkened. His good arm tightened around your shoulders. "Aerion," he repeated, and the word came out like a growl. "What happened to you, Y/N? Where have you been all these years? How did you end up here, with him?"
You pulled away from him gently. Your legs were shaking. You found a chair and sank into it, and Dunk lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the table, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his crutch clattering to the floor. He did not take his eyes off you. He watched you the way he had watched you when you were children, with that fierce, protective intensity that had once been the only thing standing between you and the darkness of the world.
"They sold me," you said, and your voice was quiet and hollow and did not sound like your own. "The men who took me. They sold me to a brothel on the Street of Silk. A high end place, for lords and merchants. The madam... she was cruel. She said I was special. She said I would make them very rich."
Dunk's hands tightened on your shoulders. His face had gone very pale beneath the bruises, and his jaw was clenched so hard you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
"And then," you continued, "Aerion came, he bought me and never left me"
And then you told him about Rhaenyra.
"Her name is Rhaenyra," you said, and your voice softened on the name, the way it always did. "She's two years old. She looks like her father. But she's kind. She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's the only good thing that has come out of any of this. And she's the reason I can't leave."
Dunk was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of bruises and exhaustion and something that might have been grief. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.
"I'll take you away," he said. "Both of you. You and the little girl. I'll find a way. I have friends now. A prince and a lord. We can protect you. We can hide you somewhere Aerion will never find you."
You shook your head. The tears were streaming down your face again, hot and silent, dripping off your chin and onto your hands. "You don't understand. He would never let me go. He would hunt me down like a dog. He would burn cities to the ground to find me. He told me... the night after the puppet show, when he came to my room, he told me the only way I would ever leave him was in a shroud. He meant it, Dunk. I have seen what he does to people who defy him. I have seen him cut a servant's hand for spilling wine on him. I have seen him laugh while a man burned alive. If I tried to run, if I took Rhaenyra and disappeared, he would never stop looking. And when he found me, and he would find me, he would kill me. He would take my daughter and he would kill me, and Rhaenyra would grow up without a mother, raised by a monster who would teach her that cruelty is strength and kindness is weakness and love is just another word for ownership."
"He would have to go through me first," Dunk said, and his voice was hard, the voice of a man who had faced seven knights in single combat and emerged victorious. "I lost you once. I believed you were dead for years. I mourned you, Y/N. I sat in that alley and I let the darkness take me because there was no light left in the world. And then I found you again, alive, here, in this place, with that man. I am not going to lose you again. I don't care if he is a prince. I don't care if he has a hundred Kingsguard. I will find a way to get you out of here. I will find a way to keep you safe. I swear it. I swear it on our mother's grave. I swear it on everything I am."
"Dunk." You reached out and took his enormous hand in both of yours. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, the skin split and scabbed over. The hands that had lifted you from the mattress where your mother had stopped breathing. The hands that had carried you into the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity. The hands that had promised you silk and lemon cakes and a world where no one would hurt you. "I want to believe you. I want to believe there is a way out of this. But you have to understand what you're risking. He will kill you. He will kill you without hesitation, without a trial, without anything but the cold satisfaction of removing an obstacle. And if you die, if you die trying to save me, I will have nothing left. Nothing. Do you understand? You are my brother. You are the only family I have in this world besides my daughter. I cannot lose you again."
He squeezed your hands. His grip was gentle, impossibly gentle for a man who had killed knights and broken bones and fought his way through horrors you could only imagine. "You won't lose me," he said. "I promise you, little sister. You won't lose me."
—
You ran. Egg had barely finished speaking before you were out the door and flying down the corridor, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your teeth, your lungs burning with every breath. You did not care if anyone saw you. You did not care if there were questions. All you cared about was getting back to Aerion's room before he woke, before he realized you were gone, before the fragile illusion of your obedience shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.
You reached the door to Aerion's chamber and paused, pressing your palm flat against the wood, forcing yourself to breathe. You could not go in looking like a woman who had just run across half the castle. You could not go in looking like a woman who had been crying in her brother's arms. You smoothed your hair with trembling hands. You wiped the tears from your cheeks. You arranged your face into the careful mask you had worn for years, and you pushed open the door.
Aerion was still asleep. He had not moved since you left. His breathing was slow and steady, his bruised face relaxed in the depths of his drugged slumber. The milk of the poppy still held him in its grip. The bandages on his ribs were unrumpled. His splinted arm lay exactly where you had arranged it. He had not woken. He had not called for you. He had not noticed your absence at all.
You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, your legs threatening to give way beneath you. You had made it. You had made it, and he did not know, and you were safe. For now. For this moment. For as long as you could keep the mask from slipping.
You returned to the chair beside his bed and sat down, and you waited.
Days passed. Aerion healed. Slowly at first, then with the stubborn, grinding determination of a man who refused to be seen as weak for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The bruises faded from black to purple to yellow-green. The swelling around his eye went down until he could open it fully again. The split lip closed, leaving a thin white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. The ribs were slower to mend, the maester said, and he would need to be careful for weeks yet, but the splint came off his arm and he began to flex his fingers, to test the range of motion, to push against the limits of his own body the way he pushed against everything else in his life.
By the end of the second week, he could walk with a stick. You were the one who helped him take his first steps. His arm draped over your shoulders, his weight pressing down on you until your knees buckled, his breath harsh and labored against your ear. You walked him across the room and back again, step by agonizing step, your body bearing the burden of his in a way that felt like a metaphor for everything your life had become.
"Good," he said through gritted teeth when he finally lowered himself back onto the bed. “That's good. I'll be out of this room by the end of the week.”
"My father is sending me away," he had said, and his voice was flat, toneless, drained of its usual fire. "Lys. A city of whores and perfumed merchants. He calls it self reflection. A chance to contemplate my actions and return a better man. But we both know what it really is. Exile. He cannot bear to look at me. He blames me for Baelor's death, even though it was his own blow that killed him. He blames me for everything."
You had not known what to say, so you had said nothing. That was safest. That had always been safest.
"You and the girl will come with me, of course, Lys is said to be beautiful. Warm. The sea is the color of sapphires, and the women walk around in silks so fine you can see their skin through the fabric. You will like it there."
You would not like it anywhere he was. But you had smiled, because that was what you did, and you had told him that Lys sounded lovely, and you had turned away to prepare his next dose of medicine so he would not see the despair in your eyes.
After that, things shifted slightly. Perhaps Aerion felt guilty for uprooting you. Perhaps he was simply trying to secure your loyalty before the journey. Whatever the reason, he began to allow you to visit Rhaenyra in the nursery. Not for long, not unsupervised, but every day. Every single day, you were permitted to leave his chamber for an hour and go to your daughter.
It was the only thing that kept you sane. You would sit in the nursery with Rhaenyra on your lap, her small body warm and solid and alive against your chest, and you would listen to her chatter about the games she had played and the songs she had learned and the dreams she had dreamed. You would brush her hair and sing to her in the soft voice you used for no one else. You would tell her that you loved her, that you would always love her, that there was nothing in the world she could do that would make you stop loving her. And you would try very hard not to think about the fact that in a few weeks, a few months at most, you would be on a ship to Lys, and the only world Rhaenyra had ever known would disappear behind her forever.
It was on one of these days, when you returned from the nursery with Rhaenyra's laughter still echoing in your ears, that everything fell apart.
You pushed open the door to Aerion's chamber and stopped dead in the doorway. There were two guards in the room. Between them, kneeling on the stone floor, was the servant. The one who had come to you days ago. The one who had said Prince Maekar requests your presence. The one who had led you through the corridors to the room where Dunk was waiting.
She was barely recognizable. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, her lips split in three places, her nose broken and crusted with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other stared at the floor with the glassy, unfocused gaze of someone who had retreated so far inside herself that she might never find her way back out. Her dress was torn, stained dark with blood and sweat and things you did not want to name. Her hands, folded limply in her lap, were missing three fingernails.
You knew, in that moment, that you were going to die.
Aerion was standing by the window, leaning on his stick, his back to you. He did not turn when you entered. He simply stood there, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, his shoulders rigid, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side.
"Close the door," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The calm of a sea that had gone flat and glassy in the moment before a tidal wave.
You closed the door. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely grip the latch.
"Aerion," you said, and your voice came out as a whisper, thin and reedy and full of the terror you could not hide. "What is this? What happened to her?"
Now he turned. His face was the face you had seen on the stage of the puppet show, cold and cruel and utterly without mercy. His violet eyes were dark with a rage that had been simmering for days, waiting for this moment, and his mouth was a thin hard line that made the scar at the corner of his lip stand out white against his skin.
"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. Still terrible. "Did you betray me? Did you see that treasonous bastard of your brother?"
Your heart stopped. Your blood turned to ice. The world narrowed to the space between you and him, the fire in the hearth, the broken woman on the floor.
"Aerion, please, let me explain..."
"Did you see him?" He did not shout. He did not raise his voice at all. But each word was a hammer blow, driving the breath from your lungs, the strength from your legs. "This woman, this servant, has told me everything. How she came to you while I was sleeping. How she led you through the castle. How my father, my own father, arranged for you to meet your brother in secret behind my back. Is it true? Answer me. Is it true?"
Your mind raced, scrambling for a lie, a deflection, anything that might save you. But the servant was kneeling on the floor with her fingernails torn out and her face beaten to pulp, and you knew that whatever you said, whatever excuse you offered, he had already made up his mind.
"It was not my choice," you said, and your voice cracked on the words. "The servant came and said your father wanted to see me. I did not know it was a trick. I did not know Dunk would be there. I went because I was afraid to refuse. Please, Aerion, you have to believe me. I did not seek him out. I would never..."
"Liar." He spat the word like a curse. "You have been lying to me since the moment you saw his face in the pavilion. You have been lying to me while you changed my bandages and brought my medicine and performed your little duties like the devoted whore you pretend to be. All this time, you have been dreaming of him. Planning with him. Scheming behind my back. Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not have you watched? Did you think I was stupid?"
"No, I never..."
"Be silent." He took a step toward you, and the stick thumped against the stone floor like a death sentence. "I have listened to your lies for years. I have listened to you whisper that you loved me while your eyes were always looking somewhere else. I have listened to you promise that you were mine while your heart belonged to another. I am done listening. Now you will listen to me."
He gestured to one of the guards. The man stepped forward, his face still grim and impassive. You barely had time to register the movement before his gauntleted hand cracked across your face.
The blow sent you sprawling to the floor. Your head hit the stone with a crack that made stars burst across your vision. The taste of blood filled your mouth. Your ears rang with a high, thin whine that drowned out everything else. You tried to push yourself up, but your arms would not hold you, and you collapsed back onto the cold stone, gasping.
"Take her away," Aerion said, and for a moment you thought he meant you. But the guard was already hauling the servant to her feet, dragging her toward the door, her head lolling on her broken neck. The other guard followed, and then the door closed, and you were alone with the dragon.
Aerion stood over you. The stick thumped against the floor as he took another step closer. You could see his boots from where you lay, the fine black leather, the silver buckles shaped like dragon wings.
"Let me tell you what happens now," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something to a child. "You are going to Lys with me. You are going to share my bed and warm my sheets and perform your duties as you have always done. You are going to smile and praise me and tell me that I am magnificent. You are going to be exactly what you have always been. My whore. My property. My thing."
He lowered himself slowly, painfully, until he was crouching beside you. His hand came down and gripped your chin, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers were cold and hard and utterly without tenderness.
"If you ever see your brother again," he said, "if you ever speak to him, if you ever so much as learn his whereabouts and fail to tell me, I will not kill you. No. Killing you would be a mercy, and I am not feeling merciful. What I will do is make you pray for death. Every single day, you will pray for it, and it will not come. Do you understand?"
You tried to speak. No words came out. Only a thin, animal whimper that you barely recognized as your own.
"And Rhaenyra," he continued, and your blood turned to ice water. "If you betray me again, if you give me even the slightest reason to doubt your loyalty, I will take her from you. Not just for a few days. Not just to the nursery. I will sell her. Do you understand? I will sell her to a brothel the moment she has her first bleeding. She will spend her life on her back with strange men between her legs, just like her mother before her. Just like the whore who whelped her. That is what happens to the daughters of traitors. That is what happens to the children of women who forget who they belong to."
"No." The word tore out of you, a desperate, animal sound. "Aerion, no, please, she's your daughter, she's your blood, you can't..."
"I can do whatever I want." His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a god passing judgment. "She is mine. You are mine. Everything you have, everything you are, exists because I allow it. Your life is a privilege. Your motherhood is a privilege. Your identity as a mother, as a daughter, as anything other than what I tell you to be, is a privilege. And privileges can be revoked."
He rose to his feet with a grimace of pain, leaning heavily on his stick. He looked down at you, crumpled on the floor at his feet, and his expression was utterly without pity.
"Your only duty is to me," he said. "You are not a mother. You are not a sister. You are not a person with a past or a family or a soul. You are my whore. That is all you have ever been. That is all you will ever be. Everything else, every moment you have spent with Rhaenyra, every breath you have taken as a free woman, has been a gift. A gift that I gave you. A gift that I can take away."
He turned to the guard who remained. The man had been standing motionless by the door, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had watched the whole thing without flinching. You wondered, distantly, how many women he had seen broken on the orders of the men who paid him.
"Incapacitate her," Aerion said. "I want her unable to walk. Not permanently. I still need her to be able to perform her duties. But I want her to remember, every time she takes a step, what happens when she forgets who she belongs to."
The guard stepped forward. You saw him coming, saw the purpose in his eyes, and you tried to scramble backward on the floor, your heels slipping against the stone, your hands clawing for purchase. It did not matter. He was on you in three strides, his hands closing around your ankle, and you heard yourself screaming, heard Aerion's voice saying something you could not understand, and then there was a sound like a branch breaking in deep winter, and your leg exploded into white-hot agony.
The world went away for a while. When it came back, you were still on the floor. The guard was gone. Aerion was still standing over you, leaning on his stick, watching you with an expression that was almost curious. As if your pain were an experiment he had conducted and he was evaluating the results.
"The maester will come to set the ankle," he said. "You will tell him you fell down the stairs. You will not mention the guard. You will not mention this conversation. You will not mention your brother or your disobedience. You will smile, and you will thank me for my concern, and you will continue to perform your duties. Is that understood?"
You could not speak. The pain was too much. Your leg was a column of fire, and every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through your body. But you managed to nod, a tiny, jerky motion of your head, and that seemed to satisfy him.
"Good," he said. "I am glad we understand each other."
He limped to the door, his stick thumping against the stone with every step. He did not look back at you as he left. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He simply opened the door and disappeared into the corridor, and you were alone.
Dunk had promised. Dunk had sworn on your mother's grave, on everything he was. And Dunk had never broken a promise to you. Not once. Not ever.
You held onto that ember as the darkness closed in. You held onto it as the pain in your ankle pulsed and throbbed and dragged you toward unconsciousness. You held onto it as the door opened and the maester's voice exclaimed in shock and you heard yourself saying, over and over, the lie Aerion had given you. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs.
And when the maester's hands began to work on your ankle, when the world went white with pain and then mercifully black with oblivion, you held onto it still.
ㅤㅤ ㅤ⭑ pairing. coworker!clark kent x journalist!reader
ㅤㅤ ㅤ⭑ about.
there was one thing you knew for sure, absolutely certain : clark kent didn’t like you. not in an angry or rude way, he was still polite, still himself. but you could feel it. his body language and attitude gave everything away. your coworkers kept insisting you were wrong, but then why did he keep avoiding you? (wc: 12.690)
ㅤㅤ ㅤ.ᐟ warnings.
smut. unprotected sex. coworkers to lovers. idiots in love. insecurities. height difference. chubby reader.
ㅤㅤ ㅤᯓ masterlist.
⭑ more about them. and here.
It was no secret at the Daily Planet that Clark Kent was a gentleman. His coworkers liked to joke that his mama raised him right—but if only they knew, it was actually his pa who was the emotional one.
Still, the truth stood : Clark Kent had been raised right.
He brought coffee to his colleagues in the morning, at least when he wasn’t running late. If someone forgot their wallet, he’d quietly pick up the lunch tab, never expecting to be paid back. He always volunteered for the articles no one else wanted to write, the stories everyone avoided.
That’s just Clark. A pleaser, through and through.
It did wonders for the office. You hadn’t met a single person who didn’t like Clark, he made it so easy to appreciate him. A gentle, big man with a heart of gold, who could hate that? You certainly didn’t. But still, you couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t like you.
Every time he walked past your desk, he avoided your gaze, eyes low and fixed on the floor, hiding his face from you. Sure, he never left you out of his little acts of kindness, bringing your favorite vanilla latte to your cubicle next to Jimmy’s with that soft, polite smile, but he never lingered. Not the way he did at other people’s desks.
At first, you chalked it up to being the new hire. But as the months slipped by, you started to realize, he just didn’t like you all that much. Which was a shame, really, considering the rather enormous crush you’d developed on the man.
You had done a marvellous job of hiding it. You were always polite with Clark, but you never stared too long, never asked your coworkers about him, never lingered by his desk longer than necessary. Still, every time he was near, your heart would pound like crazy, ready to burst right out of your chest. It was ridiculous.
Almost 26, and you still had crushes like you were in high school. You’d thought you were past all that, especially after enduring so many terrible dates. Maybe the problem wasn’t you, maybe it was the men of Metropolis. Because you seemed to have no trouble falling for a man from a small town lost somewhere in Kansas.
“Hello!” snapped you out of your daydream, along with fingers flicking in front of your face. “Have you even been listening to me?” Jimmy asked, exasperation written all over his face.
Obviously not. You hadn’t heard a word.
“Of course, Jimmy,” you said quickly, looking him in the eye.
You’d been staring at the empty coffee cup on the corner of your desk, the very one Clark had brought you that morning. You grabbed it hastily and tossed it into the trash. It had been sitting there like a quiet taunt, mocking you with the reminder that you could never have the one man you actually wanted.
Jimmy frowned at your abrupt action but quickly moved on, picking up where he'd left off with his story about his latest date. You loved him—really, you did—he was one of your favourite coworkers. But god, did he talk a lot. And since your desks were practically conjoined, you were the default audience for all of his dating escapades.
It had been a long day.
You’d spent it covering yet another political scandal, this time in Gotham City. Something about the Mayor being killed. The details were murky, grim, and far too much for a Wednesday. You couldn’t help but wish the day would just end already.
Dropping your head onto your arm, you let out a groan as you remembered the errands still waiting for you. If you didn’t get to the store soon, you’d be dining on water and regret. If Jimmy noticed you disinterest in the conversation, he didn't act on it as he kept yapping about the girl he had seen the night before.
And to top it all off, you needed a new perfume, your old one was currently sitting in the bottom of your trash can, shattered into a hundred glassy pieces. Just one more little tragedy in a day full of them.
From the moment you woke up, it had been that kind of day. And you couldn’t wait for it to be over.
“Care for a drink tonight?” Lois’s voice cut through the room like a whip, barging in out of nowhere, and mercifully putting an end to Jimmy’s endless rambling.
Normally, grabbing a drink with coworkers would’ve sounded nice. Fun, even. But not tonight.
Your head was pounding, a dull, throbbing ache that had been building for hours. That’s when you realized, you hadn’t had any water today. Just coffee. So much coffee. And now exhaustion clung to you like the plague, dragging you down like a ball and chain around your ankle.
“Not for me…” you mumbled, face buried in your arms. “My head’s killing me, so… no drinks tonight.”
After a few worried words from Jimmy, which you quickly brushed off, he went right back to talking about his date. This time, to Lois. Which, unfortunately, meant he started the entire story over again from the beginning.
You sat up with a quiet groan, realising you still had about two hours left at work. Deciding to make good use of the time, you started preparing questions for your next interview, then moved on to editing your article about the Gotham City scandal, scheduled to run the next day.
Once you were fully immersed in your work, the background noise faded. Jimmy’s voice, Lois’s witty remarks, none of it registered anymore. It was peaceful, being tucked away inside your own head, fingers dancing across the keyboard with purpose.
Unfortunately, that peace did nothing for your pounding headache, especially since your glasses were currently sitting on your coffee table at home, forgotten yet again.
The voices around you quieted when a bottle of water appeared on your desk, followed by a single aspirin. They had been placed gently on the wood, carefully set down so as not to disturb your focus. It was a quiet, thoughtful gesture, tender in a way that caught you off guard.
Looking up, you found yourself met with soft blue eyes, warm and filled with concern.
“For your head,” Clark said simply, before turning back to his own desk under the watchful gaze of three stunned coworkers.
How had he known?
He’d been at his desk the whole time. When you mentioned the headache, your voice had been muffled into your arms, barely audible even to Jimmy and Lois, who were sitting right beside you.
But Clark? Clark had heard you all the way across the room?
You couldn’t begin to figure out the logistics of it, but your heart didn’t care. It tumbled over in your chest, stuttering at the unexpected sweetness of it all.
What you didn’t see, because his back was turned, was the small, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of Clark’s mouth as he sat back down.
When you turned your eyes back to your coworkers, both Jimmy and Lois were looking at you with raised eyebrows and matching, knowing smiles.
Jimmy had been teasing you about Clark ever since he caught you blushing the first time Clark brought you coffee. And Lois? She never missed a chance to mention the "energy" she claimed she could feel between the two of you, whatever that meant.
“Oh, fuck off,” you muttered, ducking your head and returning to your article as you twisted open the bottle of water. You popped the aspirin and took a long sip, trying to drown the heat rising in your cheeks.
For someone who didn’t seem to like you very much… Clark was oddly caring.
But that was just Clark. He cared about people, that’s who he was. Thoughtful, selfless, kind to a fault. You were part of his daily life, part of the Daily Planet team, and even if he didn’t like you that way, he would still care.
That’s just how he was. Clark Kent had been raised right. There was no denying that.
A few days later, it was your turn to be late to the Daily Planet. It was rare for you, almost unheard of, but some alien had decided to crash-land on Earth the night before, and the resulting battle with Superman had wrecked part of your subway line.
You’d ended up walking twenty minutes to the office, arriving late, sweaty, and just in time to miss the morning meeting. Your punishment? Covering sports for the day. Fantastic.
You hated sports. Ironic, really, considering some of your old dates used to joke about how unathletic your body looked. Those assholes.
When you finally made it to your desk, your usual iced vanilla latte was already waiting for you, right next to a fresh bottle of water. God. Did he have to be this thoughtful?
It made everything worse. Or better. You weren’t sure anymore. All you knew was that you liked him even more now, which was exactly the problem.
“Thought you were dead,” Jimmy said the second you dropped into your chair. “Was gonna swing by your place tonight and steal your vinyl collection.”
You shot him a flat look. “Yeah, well, if Superman hadn’t turned half the N line into a pile of concrete, I wouldn’t have had to walk twenty minutes to get here.” You groaned and took a sip of your coffee.
Sweet, cold, just how you liked it. The smallest part of you hated how good it tasted, because it meant he remembered exactly what you liked. Again. And of course, he’d made sure it was iced, the summer heat had already started hitting Metropolis like a brick wall.
Jimmy giggled beside you like a child. You glanced over to see him diving into his assignment, politics, the lucky bastard. He had a long day of work ahead, while you were stuck with nothing interesting. Groaning under your breath, you reached into your bag and pulled out your glasses, resigning yourself to a long, boring day. You already knew you were going to hate it.
“Hey.” A soft voice called from behind you.
You turned, half-expecting it to be someone asking for a stapler or sticky notes. But it was Clark. You offered him a polite smile, assuming, like usual, he was there to talk to Jimmy. You were already halfway turned back toward your screen when you noticed something strange : his eyes were still on you.
You raised a brow, unsure. “Hello,” you replied, voice cautious, heart beating fast. He looked like he was fighting back a smile.
God. That little almost-smile. Your heart tripped over itself. How could someone that big be so ridiculously cute? It made no sense. None at all.
“I know you’re not a fan of sports,” Clark began, his tone gentle, “and I got stuck with local news today… which I also know you like.”
Your heart stuttered. You didn’t even need to look, Jimmy was absolutely staring at the two of you, probably wearing that smug told-you-so smirk he always pulled when it came to Clark. He’d insisted for months that you were wrong, that Clark did like you.
“He’s just polite,” you used to argue.
“He’s polite to everyone,” Jimmy would say. “But with you? He’s thoughtful.”
And damn it, now it was starting to look like Jimmy might’ve been right.
“I asked Perry, and he said as long as we’re both okay with it, he doesn’t see any problem with us switching—” Clark stopped mid-sentence.
He’d stepped a little closer to your desk, his expression soft and earnest… but then something shifted. His brow furrowed slightly, as if catching something out of place. “You changed your perfume?”
Oh.
You had. The other night, when you finally made it to the store, they’d been out of your usual scent. You’d spent a good hour testing every bottle on the shelf until you found one you liked, something softer, quieter. No one else had noticed the difference.
But of course Clark did.
You blinked, caught off guard. He wasn’t even that close. You weren’t wearing much of it. How did he notice? You felt your heart knock hard against your ribs. There it was again, that strange awareness. Like he saw and heard and felt things other people didn’t.
“Yeah,” you said, keeping your voice casual even as your pulse betrayed you. “Just trying something new.”
Clark didn’t say anything right away. His gaze lingered a little longer, thoughtful, before that small, secret smile tugged at the corner of his lips again. You didn’t know what that smile meant. But you were starting to want to.
“Anyway,” he said quickly, as if realising how odd his comment about your perfume might’ve sounded. “I figured you might want local news. I really don’t mind sports.”
He offered a soft smile as he handed you the annex documents.
“Oh, thank you so much, Clark,” you said, relieved and maybe a little too enthusiastic, swapping him the sports documents in return.
Your fingers brushed, just barely, and it sent a shiver down your spine. He was warm. Of course he was. He looked like he gave the best hugs. The kind you could melt into and forget the world existed for a little while.
You shook your head subtly, trying to knock the thought loose.
Now was not the time to imagine Clark Kent curled around you in bed during the dead of winter, holding you close while snow fell outside. Not the time to picture flannel sheets and his soft breath against your neck. Those kinds of thoughts were supposed to stay in your bedroom, late at night, when the lights were out and your imagination ran free.
Not in the middle of the office. Not in the middle of the day. And definitely not while standing in front of the actual man who starred in every single one of those fantasies.
You cleared your throat, eyes darting anywhere but his. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Clark gave you a look you couldn’t quite read, something quiet, maybe a little amused, but he didn’t press. Just nodded gently and stepped back toward his desk. And damn it, there went your brain again. Right back to flannel sheets and the curve of his smile.
“Girl, you are down bad,” Jimmy snorted from behind you, pulling you right out of your spiral.
Without even looking, you grabbed the first thing within reach, a ruler, and threw it at his head. It hit him square on. “Worth it,” he laughed, rubbing the spot before turning back to his screen.
You huffed and tried to do the same, shaking off the embarrassment and diving into your article. What you didn’t catch, too flustered and too focused on pretending not to care, was the quiet laugh Clark let slip from his own desk.
Soft. Low. Amused. Like he’d heard the whole thing…
You’d never been particularly fond of walking home.
The streets of Metropolis were always crowded, day and night, and ever since Superman had wrecked part of the N line, your commute had grown by twenty exhausting minutes each way.
Why was it so easy to smash half the city every month, but fixing it always took forever?
So you walked. Again. Winding your way toward the still-functioning stretch of the N line, where you could finally hop on a train for the last ten minutes of your journey. You were just passing a little corner restaurant when you heard your name.
Your full name. Spoken in a voice you’d come to recognize far too easily.
Clark.
Your heart jumped. Turning around, you caught sight of him instantly.
He looked the same as he had in the office, same button-up shirt with his sleeves now rolled up to the elbows, but somehow, he also looked softer. His hair had loosened in the summer humidity, and a single curl had fallen down across his forehead.
He looked good. Too good.
“Oh, hi, Clark,” you said, inwardly cringing at how small and soft your voice came out.
He smiled, warm and easy, walking toward you. “Didn’t expect to see you here. Never caught you around this part of town before.”
You shrugged, trying to keep things casual despite the way your stomach flipped.
“Oh, yeah, no, um…” You stumbled over your words, eyes flicking to the restaurant window behind him like it might save you. “Superman destroyed the N line near the office, so I have to walk all the way to the library station to catch the part that wasn’t damaged.”
Clark winced sympathetically. “Right. The whole N line mess.”
He’d been different with you lately.
Not dramatically, not enough to confirm anything, but just enough to keep your brain in a constant, swirling fog. He talked to you more. Not just about assignments, but about music, coffee, the weather, small things, personal things. His eyes stayed on you when you spoke, warm and focused. He lingered at your desk a little longer than he used to. Not like he did at Lois’s desk, all easy banter and playful grins, but still. It was something.
A start.
And right now, with his sleeves pushed up and that single rogue curl falling onto his forehead, it was definitely doing something to your heartbeat.
There was a pause, not uncomfortable, but charged, and you scrambled to keep the moment going.
“What about you?” you asked, voice softer. “You grabbing dinner?”
Clark nodded, smile easy. “Yeah. I like this place. It’s quiet, kind of tucked away. Close to home. Good food. I come here sometimes after work. Helps me think.”
His voice was slower now, more casual than at the office. The city buzzed around you, horns in the distance, the hum of summer heat, but this little moment between you felt strangely still.
“Have you eaten?” “Well, have a good night.”
You both spoke at the same time, the words overlapping, catching you off guard.
Laughter bubbled out from both of you, soft and awkward, as you stood there on the sidewalk, caught in that strange, fluttery space between goodbye and something more.
You were so drawn in by him, his eyes, his voice, the quiet warmth he carried, that you didn’t hear the teenager barreling toward you on a skateboard until it was too late. But Clark did.
Before the kid could slam into you, his hand wrapped around your forearm, firm, steady, warm, and in one smooth, instinctive motion, he pulled you into him.
The strength of it startled you. You knew Clark was strong, he was tall, broad-shouldered, always lifting stacks of paper like they weighed nothing, but this was different. He’d pulled you so quickly, so easily, it knocked the breath out of you. You stumbled forward, colliding with his chest, hands instinctively pressing against him to keep balance.
Solid. Warm. Safe.
Before you could even register how close you were, before you could say something awkward to ruin the moment, Clark gently let go of your arm, only after making sure you had your balance again.
“Want to grab some dinner with me?” he asked, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And really, how could you say no to that?
What you expected to be a quick dinner between coworkers turned into something else entirely, something easy. You shared the food you ordered, Clark was right: the place was good. Casual, quiet, with a back booth tucked away from the crowd where it was just the two of you and the low hum of the city outside.
You talked. About your lives. Childhood memories. Favorite music. Silly stories from high school. Your mutual hatred for Metropolis sports coverage when he told you he actually didn't like covering sports.
It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t awkward. There were no strained silences, no moments where you felt like you had to fill the space. The conversation simply flowed.
And for the first time in forever around him, your heart was quiet. Not because the feelings were gone. But because they finally felt safe.
Of course, Clark being Clark, he insisted on paying and walking you home, or at least to your subway station. He argued it was late, that the streets weren’t safe, as if you lived in Gotham City. That made you laugh. Ever the gentleman, he made sure to walk on the side closest to the road and even offered to carry your bag.
You had refused, obviously. Walking next to him felt strange. For one, he was so much taller than you, fitter, broader. Beside him, you almost looked like a child in comparison. You’d put on your nice skirt that morning, the one that made your ass look great, but it came with downsides, especially after meals.
Your stomach stuck out, bloated from the food, and with the heat, you hadn’t brought a jumper to hide it. That’s why you insisted on keeping your tote bag, slinging it on the side he was walking on, using it to shield your stomach from his view.
What you didn’t know was how Clark couldn’t help his eyes from drifting downward every time he fell a step behind you on the street, not on purpose, of course. But he couldn’t look away from the bounce of your ass, the way your thighs moved with each step. It was mesmerizing to him.
Finally, you reached the subway station. A bit too soon for your liking, it almost felt like you’d just been on the best date of your life. But it wasn’t a date, and Clark was still that coworker who, as far as you knew, didn’t like you all that much. Even if it didn’t truly feel that way anymore.
Maybe Jimmy was right?
“Well, you get home safe, alright?” Clark said, a small, knowing smirk playing at his lips. Knowing of what, you couldn’t quite figure out.
“Yeah, hopefully Superman took the night off,” you joked.
The smirk faded from his face, just a little, but enough. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that. You knew he and Superman were... friends, sort of. Clark was, after all, the only reporter in the city who ever got interviews with him.
Your subway ride was filled with secondhand embarrassment as you replayed everything you’d said tonight. You’d been awkward, not really that funny, and, overall, it felt like you’d talked way too much. But Clark had brought up topics you were passionate about, and once that happened, well... you yapped.
You shook your head, trying to shake off the uncomfortable weight of cringe. You’d apologize tomorrow morning, just to be safe. No need to give Clark another reason to like you even less.
Once you arrived home, you looked up at the sky, drawn by strange noises echoing above the rooftops. There he was, Superman, fighting off another threat from outer space. The battle was so close to your building you could see the entire scene unfold with startling clarity. That gave you an idea.
You made your way up to the rooftop, sat down, and pulled out your little notebook. You started writing it all out like a novel : vivid descriptions of the fight, the way Superman moved with precision, doing everything he could to avoid causing damage to the city. You noted how he kept trying to push the alien threat higher into the sky, away from civilians, careful not to hurt the beast more than necessary.
Perry would love these notes. Maybe he’d even let you cover the attack for the paper tomorrow. You kept writing, capturing everything, even the moment the Justice Gang showed up to help contain the creature, working together to finally subdue it.
The air up on the roof was lighter, breezier than the stifling heat you’d endured all day, and it made you want to stay. So you fetched your laptop, opened a blank document, and started shaping your article. Even if you hadn't officially covered the attack, yet, Perry would greenlight it, he always did when your writing spoke for itself.
You lost track of time, deep in your work, until a soft cough interrupted your flow… from the sky?
You looked up quickly, startled, and there he was. Superman himself. You’d never met him in person, but then again, who hadn’t seen him? Everyone knew that face. You knew him even better than most, thanks to Clark, who was always going on about him, especially after those exclusive interviews.
“Well, hello, Miss,” he spoke first.
You snorted softly, eyes still on your laptop screen. Not exactly ignoring him, but definitely unimpressed. Typing away, you mumbled a half-hearted, “Hey.” Maybe you were still a little petty about the N line being down.
“You shouldn’t have stayed outside during the fight,” he continued, landing gently on the rooftop and staying a respectful distance away. “It got a bit too close to your building.”
“Hm?” you murmured, barely looking up. “Oh, yeah. I’ll be alright.” You waved off the concern, trying not to sound as dismissive as you felt.
But you could feel his confused gaze on you, lingering, slightly thrown off. Clearly, he wasn’t used to being ignored. That might do him some good. Might help deflate that ego a bit. You kept typing, your fingers flying across the keyboard, but a small part of you couldn’t resist. He was standing right there. And, honestly, he could be useful.
“So, would you say you were a little in over your head before the Justice Gang showed up?” you asked, voice casual, laced with dry sarcasm. “Because it kinda looked like it from here. The alien was clearly kicking your ass for a minute.”
You didn't mean it cruelly, just honest observation. He had looked a little overwhelmed at first.
Superman blinked, clearly not expecting that kind of feedback. His brow arched, just slightly.
“Is that your professional opinion?” he asked, his voice smooth but amused. “From the rooftop press box?”
You shrugged, not looking up from your screen. “Hey, I had the best seat in the house. Front-row view.”
He chuckled softly, the sound low and surprisingly human. Almost familiar. “I’ll admit, he had a few unexpected tricks. But I had it under control.”
“Oh, sure, no doubts,” you said, finally glancing up. “Right up until the part where you got slammed into a billboard. Very graceful.”
He smiled, wry, almost humble. “That was... tactical repositioning.”
You snorted. “Is that what you call getting launched like a ragdoll now? Tactical.”
“Well,” he said, folding his arms, cape fluttering just slightly in the breeze, “you’re welcome for the save.”
“You didn't exactly save me,” you teased, then added with a touch more bite, “Though I will say, I’m glad you didn’t take out the rest of the N line this time.” Your fingers hovered above the keys as you shot him a pointed look. “I wouldn’t have been nearly as nice in the article otherwise.”
Superman’s lips twitched, like he was fighting back a laugh, or a wince. “I see. So your forgiveness is tied directly to public transport?”
“Absolutely,” you replied. “I can forgive a lot, but making me walk fourty minutes everyday? That’s borderline villain behavior.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Noted. I’ll add subway lines to the list of things to protect at all costs.”
“Good,” you said, returning to your typing. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got an article to write. Since I know you only give your interviews to Mr. Kent.”
You didn’t even try to hide the edge in your voice. Petty? Maybe. Deserved? Also maybe.
There was a pause. Then, with a teasing voice, Superman spoke again. “Jealous of Clark?”
You scoffed without looking up. “Please. I’m just saying, he gets exclusives, I get the N line destruction and a rooftop cameo.”
Another pause. A longer one this time.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ve read your articles.”
That made your fingers freeze for just a second. You had written about Superman before, here and there. Not often, mostly because your beat was international politics. But he’d made waves recently with the Boravian government, and you couldn’t not cover it.
Unfortunately, you hadn’t exactly been... gentle.
“I don’t think you like me very much,” he said, laughing softly. Not defensive. Not wounded. Just amused.
“It’s not you,” you said quickly. “It’s your actions. You act like you’re above the law, above international conflict and diplomacy. It was just an objective piece, you know? Freedom of the press.”
You tried to keep it light. You really weren’t in the mood to argue with the most powerful metahuman on Earth.
“I’ve never doubted your objectivity,” he replied, his tone teasing. “You’re with the Daily Planet, after all. Home of the most brutally honest reporters in Metropolis.”
That earned a small, reluctant smile from you. But still, something nagged at you. The way he looked at you. The way he spoke, gently, like he already knew how you thought. The rhythm of his voice. That soft smile.
It felt like you knew him.
Not just in the he's a global figure kind of way. But personally. Intimately.
Your brows furrowed slightly as you stared at him. It was so familiar, and yet your brain couldn’t quite latch on to the why. You blinked and shook the feeling off, typing again. Maybe you were just tired. Or maybe Clark had spent too much time talking about this guy.
But the thought lingered.
“Anyway,” you said, stretching your arms with a dramatic sigh, “I’d better get back to my flat. Long day tomorrow, got to write about all the money your heroics cost the city. Call a few insurance companies… you know, the fun stuff.”
You flashed him a teasing grin as you gathered your things.
Superman chuckled. “Sounds thrilling.”
You headed toward the rooftop door, hand on the handle, but paused to glance back one last time. “Goodnight, Superman,” you said, softer this time. Genuine.
“Goodnight,” he replied, already turning slightly as if ready to take off, then paused. “Oh, and… I’m sorry about the N line. I’ll keep an eye on the tracks next time. Promise it won’t get destroyed again ma'am.”
There was a grin on his face as he said it, wide, smug, just a little too pleased with himself. A shit-eating grin. Then he was gone, vanishing into the sky with a gust of wind and a blur of red and blue. You stood there for a second, squinting up at the empty sky.
That grin. You knew it. You’d seen it before, up close, maybe even across the office.
But where?
After that night, Clark started acting... different.
Not in a dramatic way, he was still the same with everyone else. Polite, calm, a little awkward in the way only Clark could be. But with you, something had changed. He was more open, more playful. The teasing started subtly, soft jokes at your expense, quick little comebacks. Nothing cruel. Just familiar. Comfortable.
He stopped watching his feet every time you walked into the room. Stopped leaving the break room the moment you stepped in. And he actually talked to you now, full eye contact, even smiling sometimes like he meant it.
It was whiplash, honestly. Not that you didn’t like it, you did. You just couldn’t figure out why he’d changed his opinion of you so suddenly.
You hadn’t even had time to apologize for being a little too awkward during dinner that night, before he’d smiled and told you he’d had a great time. Then he suggested doing it again, once a week, until the N line was repaired.
Like a standing dinner appointment. A kind of compensation, he’d said. As if he had been the one who destroyed it.
Of course you’d agreed, on one condition: you got to pay next time.
He’d agreed, smiling that soft, unreadable Clark Kent smile. But it had been three weeks now. And somehow, you still hadn’t paid for a single meal. He never let you.
It was a weird dynamic.
Every dinner with Clark felt like a date. The kind Jimmy wouldn’t shut up about, candlelit, good food, long conversations full of smiles and eye contact. You didn’t really talk about them at work. You mentioned them here and there, but you stayed discreet.
Mostly because you were convinced you were overthinking them.
Clark was one of the kindest, most genuine men you knew. Gentle, respectful, always listening, he asked about your opinions, remembered little details you'd said in passing. And he looked at you like what you were saying mattered. Like you mattered.
But you couldn’t help but feel it was just friendliness. Nothing more.
Lois and Cat, of course, completely disagreed. They kept telling you you were letting your insecurities cloud the obvious. “He likes you. Like, actual likes you, likes you.” But no matter how many times they said it, the thoughts wouldn’t leave you alone.
Clark was beautiful, annoyingly so. Funny, in that dry, awkward way. Clumsy, in a way that made him human. And strong in a way that made your brain short-circuit if you thought too hard about it. He could have anyone in Metropolis. Girl, boy, model, athlete—you name it.
And still, your coworkers were convinced he wanted to date you. It didn’t make sense.
You weren’t ugly, at least, you didn’t think so. You just weren’t remarkable either. Mundane, maybe. And yeah, you were overweight. You knew it, even if you tried to act like it didn’t matter. But somehow, when Clark looked at you during those dinners, smiling like you were the best part of his evening, it truly felt like it didn’t matter.
And with every passing week, the dinners lasted longer.
Shaking your head, you looked down at your watch.
Right now, you were sitting in City Hall, waiting for your interview with the Mayor. You were investigating LuthorCorp and its suspicious investments in political campaigns and city projects as well as foreign politics. It wasn’t the first time you’d tried to dig into Lex Luthor’s operations, but every attempt had ended the same way.
He was too powerful. Too calculated. And absolutely unafraid to bribe, threaten, or manipulate any institution that stood in his way.
You’d already been waiting for hours, juggling other article drafts, answering Perry’s increasingly impatient calls every hour about your progress with the Mayor. Which, so far, was absolutely nonexistent.
It was getting dangerously close to the end of your workday—and the end of the Mayor’s. You could already feel the familiar sting of a wasted afternoon.
Looking up from your laptop, you spotted the Mayor’s secretary walking toward you. The expression on his face told you everything before he even opened his mouth. You sighed, here we go.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice syrupy-smooth in a way that only made it more irritating. “But the Mayor won’t be able to meet with you today.”
You almost admired the effort he put into sounding polite, almost. But you knew the truth : everyone in this building hated reporters. Especially the ones who asked the kind of questions you did.
“Tell him he won’t be able to avoid reporters forever,” you said, not bothering to hide the edge in your voice. “And to stop wasting people’s time.”
You shoved your things into your bag with practiced frustration, snapping your laptop shut and slinging the strap over your shoulder. You stormed out through the main doors, the late afternoon sun catching in your eyes as you stepped onto the front steps of City Hall.
You didn’t get far.
An unfamiliar voice called your name from behind you. You froze mid-step, your stomach already sinking. Turning around, you found yourself face-to-face with none other than Lex Luthor himself, stepping smoothly out of the building like he owned it, which, in a way, he probably did.
“I’m quite sorry you couldn’t meet with the Mayor,” he said as he approached, that infuriatingly calm smirk playing on his lips. “We had a lot to discuss.”
You scoffed, lifting your chin to meet his gaze without flinching. His eyes held no remorse, no real apology, only calculation.
“It’s fascinating,” you said coldly, “how every time I have an appointment with the Mayor, you just happen to show up, Mr. Luthor.”
Lex’s smirk deepened, a flash of amusement passing through his eyes like he was genuinely enjoying himself.
“Well,” he said smoothly, clasping his hands behind his back, “some would say great minds tend to orbit the same circles.”
You raised a brow, unimpressed. “Others would say it’s suspicious."
It was his turn to scoff.
You weren’t impressed by Lex Luthor, not like half the city seemed to be. To you, he was just a man. A rich one, yes, with a dangerous amount of power and polish, but still just a man.
For years, every reporter at The Daily Planet had tried to land an interview with him. None succeeded. Lex was meticulous about his image, controlling every frame, every word. He only appeared on talk shows where he could steer the conversation, only issued carefully worded statements, and never, not once, allowed a journalist past the doors of LuthorCorp.
This wasn’t your first interaction with him. But it was the first time you thought you might have a shot at playing the game differently.
“I thought reporters loved suspicious,” he said, stepping closer. Not enough to invade your space, but just enough to remind you of the power he wielded. Political. Financial. Personal. “It’s almost like you enjoy sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
You crossed your arms, meeting his gaze without flinching. “You make it easier than most, Mr. Luthor. Corruption has a way of attracting unwanted attention.”
His smirk deepened, sharp and knowing, like he was starting to enjoy the direction this was heading.
“Ah,” he said, tilting his head as though you'd just handed him a compliment. “Still, I admire your persistence. Most people back down after one roadblock. But not you. Or your little friends at the Planet.” He spat the word like it tasted rotten, the disdain unmistakable.
“Yeah, well,” you said, eyes narrowing slightly, “we’re not most people, I guess.”
You saw it then, a flicker of something behind his eyes. Anger. Not loud or unhinged, but tightly coiled, controlled. He was a master at that. Lex Luthor didn’t explode, he simmered, he plotted, he waited.
And so you shifted. Softened.
“But I must say, Mr. Luthor…” you added, letting your voice drop just slightly, almost shy, almost deferential. “You impress me too.”
That caught him. His gaze sharpened, not with suspicion, not yet, but with curiosity. You saw the faintest hitch in his breath, the flick of calculation behind his polished exterior. This was unfamiliar territory. Praise wasn’t your usual currency with him, and he knew it.
You smiled, just enough. Meek. Disarming. Let him take the bait.
“You look surprisingly well, considering how much you’re handling these days,” you said, voice casual, light. “Must be exhausting, juggling all those city contracts, private acquisitions… and now all this quiet financing of the Boravian conflict.”
His smirk faltered. Then vanished completely. Silence.
You could almost hear the gears grinding behind his eyes. Then, there it was, the slip.
“How do you know about that?” he snapped, the chill in his voice a sudden, biting thing. “There’s been no official statement.”
Got him. You smiled slowly, the kind of smile that didn’t bother hiding the satisfaction underneath.
“I didn’t,” you said simply, reaching into your jeans pocket. The small recorder glinted in your hand as you held it up between you. “But thank you for the confirmation.”
He stiffened. You stepped back.
“You’ll be hearing from us soon, Mr. Luthor, but I know you won't answer anyway,” you added smoothly. “Have a good evening.”
Then you turned, walking away before he could gather himself enough to spin it back in his favor. Your heart was pounding in your ears, adrenaline surging. You had a lead. You had a quote. And Lex Luthor had finally made a mistake.
Still riding the high of your small victory, you left the City Hall behind in a rush, already pulling out your phone to call Clark. It was supposed to be dinner night, but this couldn’t wait, you needed to tell him what had just happened.
Sure, it hadn’t been entirely ethical. But Lex Luthor never played by the rules, so why should you?
An hour later, you sat across from Clark at your shared table, half-typing, half-talking, your food long forgotten as you recounted every detail of the encounter. He listened patiently, his plate nearly empty, while yours remained untouched, your fingers dancing across the keys in a blur.
“So, let me get this straight…” Clark said, a warm laugh slipping out as he leaned back in his chair. “You didn’t actually record him?”
“Of course I didn’t,” you muttered, not looking up, still deep in the rhythm of your draft. You grabbed a quick bite, chewing fast before continuing, “Why would I have been recording him? It's not like I knew he was gonna talk?”
Clark shook his head, eyes soft, amused. “Not exactly your most ethical moment,” he teased, the smile tugging at his lips belying any real disapproval.
You shot him a look, playful and unrepentant. “Yeah, well, ethics get a little blurry when you're up against a guy who treats international conflict like a business expense.”
He grinned, taking another bite, still watching you like you were the most fascinating thing in the room.
“You know,” he said after a beat, “Perry’s going to lose his mind when he reads this.”
You smirked, finally pausing to glance at him. “Good. Finally got my front page.”
You looked up, and froze for just a second. He was staring at you with the kindest eyes you’d ever seen. Unwavering. Soft. Like you were something rare and remarkable. Like he saw all of you and still chose to look that way.
Your chest tightened unexpectedly. No one had ever looked at you like that. Not like you were just a reporter chasing a story, but like you were everything worth watching. Right on cue, your heart skipped. Flustered, you stabbed another bite of food with your fork and went back to typing, willing the blush from your cheeks.
Eyes still on your screen, you asked, trying to sound casual, “What? Do I have something on my face?”
He let out a quiet laugh, warm and low. “No. I’m just… proud of you,” he said, like it was the easiest truth in the world. “Even if it was a slightly debatable trick.”
You allowed yourself a small smile, hidden by the screen. “Slightly? You’re going soft on me, Kent.”
“Only with you.” He winked, finishing his own food.
That made you stop typing. Just for a beat. Then, you swallowed once, quietly, unsure if it was the food or the flutter in your chest, and resumed typing, pretending like the world hadn’t just shifted a little between you.
You spent the rest of the night writing, the soft clack of your keyboard mixing with Clark’s quiet commentary as he leaned over your shoulder. He offered suggestions here and there—cleaning up a sentence, pointing out a stronger lead, helping shape the tone without ever overshadowing your voice.
It was nice. Sweet, even.
You weren’t used to this kind of collaboration, gentle, unhurried, easy. The back and forth between you felt natural, like you'd been working this way for years.
Sometimes your hands would brush when you passed him your laptop, or when you reached over, completely shameless, to steal a bite of his second dinner. He gave up trying to stop you after the third attempt and just started ordering extra.
He was eating a lot. A lot. But then again, with a body like his, it made sense. Tall, broad-shouldered, solid in a way that felt permanent. You figured all that muscle had to be maintained somehow.
Still, every now and then, you’d glance at the empty plates piling up and mutter, “Where does it all go?”
He’d just grin, dimples and all, and say, “Good metabolism.”
You didn’t believe that for a second. But you didn’t press it either.
The article was nearly done. You were both full, him more than you, and the restaurant had settled into a comforting silence broken only by quiet conversation, shared glances, and the hum of the city through your open window.
Somewhere between line edits and midnight, you realized something dangerous.
You didn’t just like working with Clark Kent. You liked being with him. What had started as a small, harmless crush had grown into something massive, and dangerous.
It crept in quietly at first. But now? It lived in every glance he gave you. Every time his soft, thoughtful smile found you across the table. Every time his hand gently reached out to stop yours from biting at your nails when stress took over. Those small, careful gestures chipped away at your resolve until your heart ached just from being near him.
So when he walked you to the subway that night, the city glowing gold around you both, and pressed a kiss—soft, lingering, infuriatingly gentle—to your cheek… your heart nearly gave out. It thumped wildly in your chest, loud enough to drown out the world for a moment.
You knew you were playing with fire. But God, you longed to get burnt.
You smiled as you descended the stairs into the subway, clutching your bag a little tighter. Hope curled in your chest like something too bold to name.
Maybe, just maybe, one day he’d feel the same way.
Sitting at your desk, you stared at the front page of the freshly printed Daily Planet.
Lex Luthor Admits to Financing International Conflicts
Your name sat proudly beneath the headline.
Perry had been thrilled with the article, grinning like a madman when it hit print, puffing his chest as he waved the paper around the newsroom. The Daily Planet's lawyers, on the other hand, were already on their third round of phone calls before noon. Emails, threats, cease-and-desist letters, they were pouring in from every direction courtesy of LuthorCorp’s legal team.
But Perry had your back. He stood behind the article, behind you, citing freedom of the press with fire in his voice and a cigar practically dangling from his teeth. You hadn’t seen him that fired up in years.
Still, even with the rush of adrenaline and pride, you couldn’t quite relax. You stared at the bold headline again, heart pounding. You’d done it.
You’d poked the beast, and it had roared. But you didn’t regret it. Not even a little.
And just when the nerves started to crawl in again, a gentle tap came on the edge of your desk. You looked up to see Clark standing there, holding two cups of coffee. One was already missing a sip, his.
The other? Yours, just the way you liked it.
“Front page, huh,” he said softly, eyes warm. “Welcome to the club.”
You took the cup, fingers brushing his. That look was back in his eyes again, that same quiet pride from a few nights ago, the one that made your heart trip over itself.
“Thanks,” you said, your voice lower than you meant.
He smiled again before making his way toward his own desk.
You felt so proud of yourself. You couldn't help but smile for the rest of the morning, having a hard time focussing on your work for today. Your eyes always lingered back toward the newspaper lying on your desk. All your team had made sure to congratulate you, filling your heart with warmth.
“Drinks tonight, you can’t say no. We are celebrating you!” Lois’s voice shot across the bullpen like a bullet, barely giving you time to blink before she was already halfway to Perry’s office, heels clicking with authority.
You looked up from your monitor. “I didn’t even say anything yet!”
And she was right, you couldn’t say no. It was Friday night, and you had nothing better to do. You weren’t behind on work, the fridge was stocked, the laundry was done. You had no excuse. And you had made the front page! It was a thing to celebrate.
And maybe it would help taking your mind of Clark, and your not real dates.
They were fun, too fun, really. Liberating in the moment, like you could breathe around him. But afterward? The crash was brutal. Your brain wouldn’t stop spiraling, overthinking every word, every glance, every little laugh. It hurt. Even when it shouldn’t.
That’s how you found yourself, hours later, sitting at a sticky table in O’Sullivan’s, Metropolis’s finest pub, surrounded by your favorite coworkers. Clark and Cat were deep in a heated debate about Superman’s very questionable sense of style, while you, Lois, and Jimmy were somehow talking about... toes?
Jimmy had started it. He always did. The man had a gift for derailing any normal conversation within five minutes.
Oh, and Steve was there too. He hadn’t said much, but he was sipping his beer like a man who had no idea how he’d ended up in a conversation about capes and toes.
As the night wore on, everyone was getting progressively more affected by the alcohol. Everyone but one.
Clark.
He was weirdly good at holding his drinks. Thinking about it, you couldn’t recall ever seeing him drunk. You were fairly sober yourself, a little tipsy, pleasantly warm, but nothing like Jimmy and Cat, who were currently butchering We Will Rock You on karaoke with the absolute confidence of people who had forgotten shame existed.
“How come you’re not drunk?” you shouted over the noise, leaning in a little closer.
He turned away from the chaos, and those soft, annoyingly kind eyes landed on you. Paired with that specialty Clark Kent smile, gentle, quiet, and somehow entirely his, it sent a sudden jolt of heat straight between your legs.
“It’s simple,” he said, holding up his beer. “I didn’t drink that much.”
Sure enough, he was still nursing his first beer, half-full. Meanwhile, the table had gone through at least four rounds.
You stared at the glass, distracted now by the way his fingers wrapped around it, long, strong, careful. The glass looked small in his hands. Like a toy. And for some reason, that sent another ripple of heat through you.
“You seem a little out of it,” Clark added, that soft smirk playing at his lips again, just this side of teasing, but still warm.
You blinked, realising you’d been staring. Hard.
“Oh no, I’m good,” you said, far too loud, and threw both thumbs up in an awkward gesture that immediately felt like a mistake.
Had you been sober, you might’ve cringed. Hard. But right now? Cringing wasn’t on the menu. Not when your brain was soft and hazy, and your eyes were locked on his mouth, on that smirk.
You’d seen it before, of course. He was your colleague, your friend, and Clark smiled all the time. But there was something different about this smile. Something tucked just behind it, something unspoken, almost amused. It tugged at the edge of your memory. Familiar. Too familiar. But just foreign enough to slip out of reach.
Your brows pulled together, the confusion settling in your expression before you could hide it. He tilted his head slightly, watching you. Curious. Patient. Like he knew something. Almost amused.
“Tell him!” Lois’s voice rang out far too close to your ear, snapping you miles away from your little internal investigation. “Tell him about the little cute alien that was glued to your window for days!”
You blinked, turning to find her grinning like a devil, eyes glassy from one too many drinks. Beside her, Steve looked unsure, eyebrows raised, clearly bracing for whatever bizarre story was about to unfold.
They were both watching you. Waiting.
It was a silly story. Embarrassing, even. But one you liked telling, so you did just that. Animated and loud, hands waving around as you launched into the tale.
What you didn’t notice, though, was the way Clark let out a quiet sigh as you turned away. The tension in his shoulders softened, his body subtly relaxing now that he was no longer under your scrutinising gaze.
The hours passed in a haze of laughter, bizarre stories, and absolutely butchered karaoke performances. It had been a long time since the Daily Planet crew had spent a night like this, no deadlines, no looming crises, just fun.
You felt good. Sobered up completely now, like most of the group, except Jimmy, who was still riding whatever chaotic, alcohol-fuelled high had taken hold of him three hours ago.
Thankfully, he lived near the bar, just a few blocks from Lois and Cat. The two women, still giggling, promised to get him home in one piece. You watched them chase after him with fond amusement as they all disappeared into the night.
Yeah. Tonight had been good.
“Fuck,” you muttered under your breath as you checked the time. No way you were making the last subway, especially with the fifteen-minute walk to the nearest working station.
“Everything okay?” Clark asked beside you, concern laced in his voice as his gaze dropped to your phone.
You sighed, trying to wave it off. “I missed the last metro,” you said, almost sheepish. Then, looking up at the soft, quiet summer night around you, you added, “But it’s fine. It’s a good night for a walk.”
“I’ll walk you home,” he said simply, firmly. The kind of tone that left no room for argument.
So, after a quick wave and a goodnight to Steve, you found yourself on the sidewalk beside him, heading off into the quiet streets. Of course, you did try to protest. You told him, more than once, that you were fine walking alone, that he really didn’t need to go all the way to your place when he lived so close to the bar.
But he waved off every concern without missing a beat.
“I’m not letting you walk home alone at nearly 1 a.m.,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “My ma would kill me if she found out.”
You laughed, shaking your head, but secretly? You were glad he insisted.
The thirty-minute walk flew by in what felt like seconds. One blink, and suddenly, you were home.
Conversation flowed effortlessly, like it always did since that first dinner. Comfortable. Familiar. He still walked on the side closest to the road, like always. But tonight, he was a little closer than usual. Just enough that your fingers brushed now and then, barely there, featherlight, but every time, your heart skipped like it hadn’t quite gotten the memo to stay calm.
You didn’t say anything about it. Neither did he. And neither of you moved away, either.
You joked about Jimmy and Cat’s drunken rendition of classic rock songs, gently mocked Steve for always looking like he’d wandered into the wrong timeline, and even admitted that you agreed with Cat about Superman’s questionable taste in suits.
Clark had laughed at that, a soft, genuine sound that made something warm bloom in your chest. And just like that, you were standing in front of your building. The night felt too short. The goodbye, too soon.
Standing on the stairs just before the front door of your building, you found yourself eye-level with Clark, a rare occurrence, given the fact that the man was a literal giant. Something in his eyes, in the way his body leaned ever so slightly closer to yours, in the quiet reluctance on his face, as if he, too, was a little sad the walk had ended, pulled the words from your lips before you could second-guess them.
“Wanna come upstairs?” you asked, the question barely louder than the breeze. A whisper, almost lost to the wind.
But Clark heard you. Of course he did.
Not just because he was standing close, but because it was your voice. A voice he would pick out in a sea of thousands. A voice he'd hear anywhere, no matter how far. Though you didn’t know that part.
He nodded, barely, a quiet “Yeah” slipping from his lips like a promise.
It wasn’t long before your back hit your front door, upstairs, his body pressing gently, but undeniably, against yours. His lips found yours with the kind of urgency that had clearly waited too long. Soft, but certain. Gentle, but wanting. The kiss was rushed, but not careless. It felt like everything you’d both been holding in, months of glances, of almost, of quiet moments too full to name.
This wasn’t a kiss just for the sake of kissing.
You kissed him harder, pushing up on your toes to meet him, trying to say with your mouth what your heart had never dared to voice. That you liked him. That you had for so long. That you hadn’t imagined any of it.
Clark groaned softly into the kiss, lowering himself just enough until, without warning, his arms swept around you, lifting you with an ease that felt unfair. You wrapped your legs instinctively around his waist, breath catching in your throat as he deepened the kiss. He let you no time to protest.
His mouth moved against yours, tongue seeking, exploring, like he had something to say too. Something he hadn’t found the words for yet. And you let him say it this way.
His hands slid under your thighs, pulling you closer until your bodies were flush, his warmth seeping through your clothes and setting your skin on fire. You wrapped your arms tightly around his neck, anchoring yourself to him as if you might float away otherwise.
The kiss deepened, slow and searching, a conversation without words. His tongue traced yours, tentative at first, then more sure, like he was learning the shape of you, committing every detail to memory.
Finally leaving the front door, Clark walked inside your flat with the ease of someone who belonged there. Without hesitation, he made his way to the couch and sank down with a quiet groan, the sound thick with relief.
You settled on his lap, feeling the solid weight of him beneath you. At the noise he made, you instinctively tried to shift, to sit beside him instead, worried you might be too heavy. But Clark’s hands found your hips, gripping firmly, holding you in place.
“No,” he murmured, voice low and urgent, his fingers tightening just enough to pull you closer. You froze as his lips found yours again, this kiss deeper, more demanding. You barely had time to protest before his arms wrapped around you, anchoring you to him.
Your breaths tangled together, your heart pounding in a wild rhythm that echoed his own. You felt it under your fingers. Time seemed to stretch, the world outside shrinking until it was just the two of you, suspended in this moment where everything finally made sense.
When he pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes were dark, shimmering with something raw and real. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” he murmured, voice low and rough. “More than I knew how to say.”
Frowning, you let out a confused sound. "I thought you didn't like me."
Now it was his turn to look confused. Clark blinked, his eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to process your words. Then, slowly, a genuine smile spread across his face, followed by a laugh, deep, sincere, and filling your flat.
“Is that why you always looked so gloomy around me?” he asked, the smile still lingering.
“You avoided me, Clark. All the time. Watching your feet whenever I was near, never talking for more than a minute, never lingering at my desk unless it was necessary…” you said, a hint of frustration creeping into your voice at his teasing. “How the hell was I supposed to know you liked me?”
“I bring you coffee,” he said matter-of-factly, as if that explained everything.
“You bring coffee to everyone,” you shot back, deadpanned, rolling your eyes.
Clark chuckled, shaking his head with that familiar, easy grin. “Yeah, but I always made sure you got the good stuff. Overly sugary milk with a bit of coffee.”
You raised an eyebrow, skeptical, but couldn’t hide the small smile tugging at your lips. His lips trailed softly from your cheek to your jaw, then down to your neck. He lingered over your pulse point, as if savouring the gentle thrum beneath his touch.
“Just know,” Clark murmured, his head still resting against your neck, “I’ve always appreciated you.”
Before you could respond, his lips found yours again, silencing any argument with a tender, insistent kiss.
The kisses felt euphoric, as if time itself had slowed to stretch them out for hours. With Clark, everything was effortless and unhurried. Unlike your past lovers, there was no rush, he moved as if he had all the time in the world, and right now, so did you.
His hands explored your body with tender care, caressing softly, never demanding, always gentle. He asked before slipping your shirt off, waited for your consent before removing your bra. Once you were bare, he peeled off his own shirt, never making you feel vulnerable or exposed.
His touch was intoxicating, as soothing as his lips. You melted under the weight of his hands, large, warm, and perfectly fitting as they cupped your breasts. His fingers toyed with your peaked nipples, alternating between soft caresses and gentle pinches, an unspoken apology woven into each movement. Paired with his lips tracing your neck and lips, it was utterly overwhelming.
Without even realising it, your hips began to move, grinding softly against him, responding to the slow, delicious tension building between you.
He chuckled softly against your lips as your covered core pressed against his already hard length. It was one of the hottest sounds you’d ever heard, a breathless, teasing laugh that sent shivers straight through you. Jimmy had been right, you were absolutely down bad.
“Keep going,” he groaned into your ear, his voice thick with need, just as you paused to rest your forehead on his bare, warm, and slightly sweaty shoulder.
His breath fanned over your skin, warm and steady, grounding you in the moment. You lifted your head slowly, eyes meeting his, dark, intense, and full of something deeper than desire.
His hands found your waist again, pulling you closer until there was no space left between you. The heat of his body seeped into yours, setting a slow, steady rhythm as your hips moved against him. Every touch, every brush of skin, was electric, soft, like he was memorising every curve, every inch of you. You felt safe, wanted, and adored in a way you hadn’t known you needed.
You felt how wet you were, and judging by the hard length pressing against you, you knew he was just as affected as you were. It felt incredible to be wanted by Clark—needed, desired. For months, you had told yourself you were too plain, too overweight, too annoying. But it turned out he liked all of that about you.
You rocked your hips again, frustrated by the layers of clothing between you. Without thinking, you stood up and hurriedly peeled off your pants and panties in a clumsy, rushed way, like the fabric was burning your skin.
Standing naked before him, you noticed the effect it had on Clark. He froze, almost like his brain had short-circuited, not quite processing the very clear message you were sending, that you wanted him naked too. Instead, he simply admired your body, his eyes tracing you slowly and thoroughly, over and over.
Taking matters into your own hands, you knelt in front of him, fingers already fumbling with his belt buckle. That seemed to snap him back to reality. He gently took your hands in his, kissed your fingers softly, then stood up, pulling you to your feet with him.
After slipping off his pants and briefs, he sat back down on the couch and pulled you back onto his lap.
Your breath hitched as his warm hands settled on your hips, grounding you against him. His gaze roamed over your bare skin, eyes filled with awe and something soft, like he was seeing you in a way no one ever had.
You leaned into him, your hands resting lightly on his broad shoulders, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath his skin. The weight of him was comforting, a promise of care and tenderness.
Slowly, carefully, his lips traced a path from your neck to your collarbone, each touch igniting sparks along your skin. You sighed, the tension of months of self-doubt melting away under his gentle attention.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he murmured between kisses.
You gasped, eyes wide as a teasing smile tugged at your lips.
"Did Clark Kent just swear?" you teased, knowing full well his reputation at the office for a gentle, swear-free vocabulary. The fact that he’d let loose like this on your skin made your heart swell with warmth.
He playfully nipped at the skin of your breast before his lips closed over your nipple, while his fingers danced teasingly on the other. Your hips began their slow rocking again, finally satisfied by the warmth of his skin pressed against yours.
You felt him twitch against your stomach, biting your lip at the raw desire radiating from him. It had been far too long since you’d felt this wanted.
“Clark,” you moaned softly.
“Hm?” He lifted his head from your breast, eyes searching yours, waiting.
“I need you,” you whispered into his ear, voice tender and full of longing. “Please.”
How could he ever say no when you sounded that sweet?
Clark’s breath hitched, a low growl vibrating in his chest as he pulled you tighter against him. His hands slid down your back, fingers tracing the curve of your spine with a reverence that made your skin tingle.
Without breaking eye contact, he gently tilted your chin up and kissed you deeply, slow and deliberate, like he wanted to memorise every inch of you. His warmth seeped into you, grounding you in this moment where nothing else mattered.
His hands gently lifted your thighs, easing them onto his lap just enough to draw himself closer to your warm entrance. He paused, holding you there, then looked at you through his glasses, silent, searching, asking without words if this was truly what you wanted. You nodded and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
With utmost care, he began to lower you onto his length, inch by inch, never rushing, always attentive to your reactions. The warmth and pressure were overwhelming, but not in a painful way more like a delicious surrender. You should have known, it's always the quiet, nerdy, clumsy ones who surprise you by being big.
Finally settling back onto his lap, you needed a moment to catch your breath. You slumped against him, your head resting in the crook of his neck, your hands gripping his shoulders tightly. His hands were steady and soothing, tracing gentle circles along your back, cupping the nape of your neck with tender care. His soft voice whispered warmth directly into your ear, telling you how good and warm you felt.
He urged you to take your time, to never rush, he could wait as long as you needed, even the whole night. But you didn’t need time. You needed to move. So, slowly and hesitantly at first, you began to rock your hips, a gentle, tentative motion.
It felt good, so good. He was reaching places no one else ever had, not even your toys. The sensation was unfamiliar, almost overwhelming, but far from unwelcome. You kept rocking against him, and each pass of his pelvis against your clit made your breath catch in your throat. It was breathtaking... but soon, it wasn’t enough.
Lifting your head from the crook of his neck, you looked up at him, really looked. You wanted to see his face, his expression, as you began to bounce on him. It started softly, tentative, testing the limits of what your body was discovering. But the more you felt, the bolder you became—and so did he.
His hands found your hips again, guiding them with more purpose, lifting and pressing you down onto him in a steady rhythm. But even that didn’t satisfy him for long. Soon, his hips began to thrust up to meet yours, strong and fast, until his pace overtook yours and all you could do was hold on.
Moans, grunts, whines, and gasps filled the room, raw, honest sounds tangled together with the sharp rhythm of skin against skin. Sounds that had never once filled this flat before Clark.
After a few minutes of his relentless rhythm, you felt your orgasm building, close, achingly close, but just out of reach, like it was trapped behind a wall of glass. You let out a soft whine directly into Clark’s ear, trying to rock your hips in rhythm with his, but you couldn’t keep up. He was too fast, too deep, too much.
But he noticed. Of course he did. The way you whimpered, the way your body tried to move, it told him everything. And he felt it too, in the way your pussy tightened around him with desperate pulses, clenching so hard it almost made him see stars.
He smiled, just a little. His girl only needed a bit more.
His hand slipped between your bodies, fingers sliding down to where you were joined. At first, he just teased, letting his fingertips brush lightly across your skin. It earned him another needy whine, one that made him chuckle softly against your shoulder.
Greedy little thing you were.
And he adored you for it. Clark would give you anything.
Without holding back any longer, his fingers found your clit, circling it in slow but steady motions, firm, grounded, perfect. The added pressure sent shocks of pleasure through you, colliding with the rhythm of his hips pounding into you. Your toes curled. Your hands dug into his shoulders. It was all too much.
And then it happened, your release crashing over you, breathtaking and unstoppable. The moans caught in your throat, your body trembling as wave after wave of pleasure consumed you.
Clark wasn’t far behind. The sound of your climax, the way your body tightened around him like a vice, it pushed him over the edge. With a groan that rumbled deep in his chest, he came hard, spilling into you, filling you with warmth.
Even as the last waves of your orgasm pulsed through you, Clark didn’t stop. His thrusts slowed just enough to keep from overwhelming you, but they were still deep, intentional. He stayed hard inside you, your slick heat coaxing him to keep moving, to draw every last ounce of pleasure from your spent body.
Finally, after a few more thrusts, he stilled remaining inside you. A golden, heavy quiet filled the room, broken only by the sound of your ragged breathing and the gentle thump of his heart against your chest.
Clark didn’t move right away. He just held you. One arm wrapped securely around your waist, the other stroking your back in slow, grounding circles. His lips pressed soft, breathless kisses against your temple, your cheek, your shoulder, everywhere he could reach without letting you go.
“You okay?” he murmured, voice low and careful.
You nodded against him, too dazed to form words just yet. He smiled softly and shifted just enough to grab the blanket off the couch, wrapping it around your back without slipping out of you. He stayed seated, still joined, still holding you close like he couldn’t bear to let you go.
Getting up with you still in his arms, his softening cock still nestled in your warmth, he carried you gently toward the bathroom. He turned on the water, letting it warm up for the both of you, steam already beginning to rise and curl around the tiles.
He set you down carefully on the counter, your body pliant in his arms. Your head came to rest against the cool mirror behind you, eyes half-lidded, lips parted in a dazed smile. Clark let out a quiet chuckle at your blissed-out expression, brushing his fingers tenderly across your cheek.
“I’m gonna pull out now, okay?” he said softly, voice full of care, not wanting to startle you or cause any discomfort.
“Yeah…” you mumbled, barely coherent, too tired and thoroughly spent to say more than that.
The shower was quick, quiet, and sweet. Clark was gentle with every touch, washing your body with thoughtful care, making sure not to linger too long or overstimulate your already-sensitive skin. He moved with reverence, like tending to something precious.
When it was over, he didn’t bother trying to dress you. Instead, he wrapped a towel around your damp body, gently patting you dry before scooping you back up into his arms.
He didn’t go back to the living room for his briefs, didn’t bother with anything else. All that mattered was getting you comfortable.
He carried you straight to your bed, settling you down with the same tenderness he’d shown you all night. Then he climbed in beside you, pulling you into his arms like you belonged there, like you always had.
The soft throw blanket he’d grabbed on the way to the bathroom now covered both of you, a light layer against the summer night. The duvet was folded off to the side, too heavy, too much, especially with Clark radiating warmth like a human furnace.
You let yourself melt into him, safe, warm, held.
You felt like you were on another planet, drifting through the best dream of your life, half-convinced you’d wake up any minute. Needing to make sure he was real, solid and warm beneath you, you clung to him. One leg curled possessively around his waist as you lay nearly fully on top of him, your bodies still bare, still close.
His semi-hard cock rested dangerously close to your still-sensitive cunt. It was a risk… but one you welcomed. A game you were more than willing to play again if it led to the same beautiful consequences.
Your fingers traced idle shapes along his chest, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breath. When you looked up, you found him already watching you, glasses still perched on his nose.
Weird.
Had he even taken them off in the shower? You couldn’t quite remember. Your brain had been hazy, your body boneless, your mind confused, but you were almost certain he’d kept them on the whole time. Just like he was keeping them on now, even though you both clearly had no plans of moving anytime soon.
You brushed it off, figuring he just wanted to see you clearly. Maybe it was a comfort thing. Maybe it was just Clark.
The silence stretched for a few more moments, soft and content, until you broke it with a rasping whisper. “You know I had the biggest crush on you for months?”
His lips curved into that smug, infuriatingly cute grin. “Oh yeah. I know,” he said, teasing deep in his voice.
You squinted at him, suspicious. “What do you mean, you know?”
Still grinning, he added—without thinking, way too casually. “I could hear how fast your heart was beating.”
Silence. Your brain stalled.
“You could… what?”
His smile faltered. Fuck. Clark had a lot of explaining to do.
aerion x valarr's wife, aerion x daeron's wife, aerion x maekar's second wife
dragons need heirs. and if maekar won't arrange for aerion to have a wife of his own, then aerion will just have to get the wives of his family members pregnant.
1.4k words
cw: aerion is a CREEP, breeding, dub con/non con, mentions of infertility/miscarriage, alcohol, cheating
aerion is a dragon in human form. he can feel the fire in his flesh, the fury, the power. he is the last hope for his family's legacy and the return of the dragons. and yet his father will not grant him the valyrian wife he needs to bear his dragonlings. aerion alone is denied the right to a mate. valarr and daeron have wives. even maekar had remarried to a pretty young thing closer in age to aerion than to his father.
so aerion will just have to put his heirs in their wives.
true, he could easily find some dragonseed in flea bottom or seduce some lord's maiden daughter, but that is too easy. he wants his seed to take root in as much of the targaryen family tree as he can. truly, he's doing it for the good of his house, giving them as many dragons as possible. and not one of his three intended have yet swelled with child and delivered healthy babes, so really, they should be grateful he has chosen them.
he claims valarr's wife first.
she hasn't yet managed to give the young prince his heir. valarr plants his seed, but it doesn't take; if it takes, it does not grow long, before the child is lost. it isn't her fault. she's doing her duty. her body is trying to grow the future king of westeros. valarr is to blame. he isn't strong enough. man enough. he might look gallant on a steed and have fair manners, but he's failed in that most basic purpose of a prince, to father more princes.
that's what aerion tells her, with gentle, comforting voice so as not to frighten her. perhaps valarr can never give her a child. and yet he must have an heir, or else his legacy will pass to his brother. valarr's line ended. failed. but aerion could give her that child. what did it matter which targaryen put the baby in her? valarr need not ever know. and it would be such a relief to him, a joy even, to have a son. doesn't she want valarr to be a father and feel like a real man? doesn't she want to do her duty to house targaryen by giving it the heir it needs?
aerion coaxes his way into her bed. angles her knees up and bent, hips up, into a mating press, to get his cock in as deep as possible. he takes her like this every time without fail. this isn't about perversion or desire, though he does insist on making her cum every time. he tells her it helps with procreation if the woman cums, but really it's about control. he's forcing her body to admit to enjoying this. that as much as she acts detached, even disdainful, she craves his touch. and he gets the satisfaction of knowing he's stolen valarr's bride and she loves it when he fucks his baby into her, filling her womb the way valarr can't. valarr has everything, but he'll never have this, not truly. sometimes he fantasizes about valarr returning to her earlier than expected and finding another man's seed dripping from her, some remnant of aerion that had just gone too deep for her to clean away; aerion knows that can never happen, it would ruin everything, but he still enjoys the fantasy.
aerion breeds her as often as he can for a month, just to be certain it takes, before moving to his next chosen mate.
daeron's wife is trickier. valarr's wife had a reason to give in to aerion and he knows she will never reveal the truth, for her sake and the sake of her child. daeron and his wife have shown no real interest in having children. daeron has never cared for legacy. he has never done anything for his house. in truth, it's better he never has children; he isn't worth of continuing his line. aerion might try to directly seduce her, but that path presents risks. daeron's wife is harder for him to read. and if she did rebuff him, it could risk exposing his seduction of valarr's wife. aerion can't risk that. aerion will have to be clever.
at the next feast, aerion pays a servant to ensure her wine glass is never empty and is always filled with the strongest vintage. he doesn't have to do anything to daeron; daeron puts himself into a near stupor on his own. aerion arranges for her to receive what she thinks is a message from daeron telling her to meet him back at their chambers, with the candles unlit. aerion watches her flush, and sway, and knows she's ready for him. she leaves the party. aerion ensures daeron is kept occupied and follows after her.
she ought to have easily recognized that the man who entered her rooms was not her husband, even in the dark, what with aerion's much shorter and leaner frame. but he's made certain she's too drunk. still, to be cautious, he bends her over the bed and takes her from behind with only his cock and hips making contact with her. aerion makes her mewl and moan for it. he's not got much time, but he again needs that satisfaction of knowing his chosen enjoy being bred by him. aerion doesn't stop until you've taken three loads and are nearly asleep. he knows by the time daeron stumbles in, and wakes beside her the next morning, he'll just have assumed he'd fucked her and forgotten it in his wine-addled state.
aerion pulls the same trick twice more. he'd like to keep going, increase his chances, but he can't risk being caught. he'd prefer for all his women to be carrying his babes at the same time, purely for the pleasure of seeing the overwhelming proof of his virility, but aerion is patient. daeron's wife is like to still be fertile for several years. he can take his time with her, if need be, but he will see her swollen with his child.
maekar's wife is aerion's favourite and he has been saving her for last. he's wanted her the moment he laid eyes on her. it wasn't right, that his father should take a second wife, when aerion was still denied his first. aerion might have forgiven it if he knew it to be an old man's lechery. but no, his father had lain with her only once, to consummate the union. otherwise he ignored her and she was left to her own devices. she had confessed as much to him, once, and looked so embarrassed for it, so innocent, so underappreciated, that it had made aerion long to take her then and there.
but aerion waits. he earns her trust. he becomes her confider, her friend. the only targaryen who really pays her any attention at all. she's just so alone, apart from him, she tells him. and aerion answers, of course he's there for her. they are family. step-mother. and aerion watches the disappointment in her expression, the frown, the longing, and he knows he has her exactly where he needs her.
aerion reassures her in between kisses that this isn't wrong. she was meant to be his wife. maekar had stolen what rightfully should have been his son's. aerion is only taking back what is his. he just wants to please her, love her, after she's been cruelly neglected for so long. trust him. he knows what's best for her, he's the only one who really cares about her.
aerion makes her ride him. she struggles to take him, but he insists. she needs to ride her dragon. and aerion finds that so long as he rubs her needy, neglected little clit just right, she'll do whatever he says. keeps bouncing on his cock until she's shaking. even then aerion doesn't let up, but instead holds her up with his hands while he bucks his cock into her, again and again.
over the next fortnight, he takes her all the ways he's been dreaming of for so long.
it isn't long until the court learns that valarr, daeron, and maekar's wives are all expecting their first child. it nearly makes aerion roar with delight. he's done it. he's done exactly what a dragon is meant to. he's claimed. he's bred. he's made three little dragons to continue his family's legacy.
as the three ladies grow larger, and often accompany one another to share their pregnancy pains, the court notes that prince aerion is unusually attentive, almost always to be found in the same room in a protective, guarding stance.
later that year, house targaryen welcomes two little princes and a princess, all silver-haired.
A/N: I am absolutely in love with @idksmtms's fics of Maekar having a young wife whom Dunk confuses with his daughter, and I just kept thinking about how Baelor would react if it happened to him 😭 so I wrote this. Special thanks to @vhagars-dementia for constantly blessing this fandom with her ideas!!! I dedicate this to you <3 And to all my Baelor enthusiasts.
— summary: ser duncan the tall thinks you're just a beautiful girl close to his own age, but his innocence is his undoing when he mistakes you for just another targaryen cousin. the only problem? you are actually the lady of dragonstone and baelor’s wife.
— pairing: baelor targaryen x wife!reader
— word count: 2k
— content: controversial young wife!reader, age gap, humor, mentions of reader's hair length, jealous!baelor, implicit sexual references, pda.
⋆ . ۰˚ ౨ৎ ── series masterlist with different characters’ versions: here!
The hedge knight spends more time than ever with the family, forever trailing after Aegon like a loyal hound, laughing, jesting, and, above all, eating.
It was only to be expected that the prince would invite his dear friend to the feast held at Dragonstone for the celebration of your name day. Your husband, Baelor, had prepared a banquet worthy of you, with an enormous cake and hundreds of servants rushing frantically through the castle, adorning the halls with flowers and colors chosen to your liking. He knew you exceptionally well, so it had been easy for him to decorate precisely how you'd like.
You had told him, of course, that such splendor was unnecessary, that a small supper with the family would have more than sufficed. Yet Baelor delighted in spoiling you, for you were the finest blessing he had been granted in a lot of time.
Whenever Ser Duncan the Tall found himself in your presence, he devoted most of his time to watch you from afar—seeing you laugh beside Baelor, play with Egg, or even speak comfortably with Prince Aerion. Your presence was nothing short of glorious, a magnet for eyes and devotion wherever you went. Your nature was exquisite—kind, gentle, and so unbearably sweet that at times Dunk thought you could scarce be of the same blood as the rest of them.
And your beauty… that was another matter entirely. You were the loveliest sight the humble eyes of a hedge knight had ever beheld. Your form was wondrous, your face celestial, your long hair falling over your shoulders like a silken cascade, and your smile... it stole the very breath from his chest every time. Each time you entered his sight, a sigh would just escape out of him, soft and helpless, like a boy hopelessly in love.
“Do not even think it, Dunk,” Egg warns him, as he had more than once before, quick to notice the besotted look upon his big friend’s face as they sat together at the table. “That's out of your power to reach, Ser.”
But Dunk does not answer. He is far too intent upon you as you appear in the great hall’s doorway.
Today you wear a gown of red, dazzling, adorned with pearls and white embroidery that spreads across your bodice, climbs your shoulders, and trails down the length of your spine, where darker crimson stitching forms the likeness of dragon scales. Your hair lies loose down your back, softly waved, gleaming in the candlelight.
All rise at your entrance.
Dunk is the last. He nearly stumbles over his chair in his haste, its legs scraping loudly against the stone floor as he shoves it back. That alone—and you—turn him red as a summer apple.
Valarr, seated at his other side, watches his brutish motion with poorly hidden amusement.
“My love,” Baelor calls first, his face gentle as drifting clouds, fondness curving his lips as he comes to greet you properly. “Happy name day.”
You accept his embrace, smiling as he presses a tender kiss to your hair.
After him, the others come in turn, forming a line to offer their wishes, their thanks, their gifts—small tokens and letters placed into your hands.
Egg flings himself into your arms, making you laugh and sway back a step beneath the force of him. Baelor, standing close at your side, smiles at the sight. Ever tender are you with the younglings, and for that, he loves you all the more. You shower his children with a devotion so maternal and steadfast that one would never guess they did not spring from your own womb.
“Thank you, my sweet Aegon,” you tell him, stroking the fine, pale silver-gold hair already sprouting upon his head. The boy had even brought you a flower—one of those you cherished most, a silent token of his affection.
Duncan feels painfully out of place when his turn comes. Standing empty-handed while his stomach twists into a tight, miserable knot.
He is already flushed when you lift your gaze to him, your eyes sparkling with amusement at the familiar effect you have upon him—his trembling hands, his stammer, his shy smiles. He's so cute!
“Ser Duncan. I hope you would be here,” you greet him warmly, you know well the bond he shares with Aegon; to have him present is a comfort to your heart. “Aegon speaks wonders of you. It does not surprise me to see you have become each other's shadow.”
“My lady,” Dunk answers you, his voice no louder than a mouse’s squeak. His gaze, much against his better judgment, betrays him, making a swift, helpless journey over the length of your body.
And Baelor notices, of course; his smile fades, slow and certain, as he watches the knight’s every movement like a hawk perched upon your shoulder. A single brow lifts slightly, and a deep, thoughtful furrow begins to cloud his brow.
Duncan clears his throat and casts your husband an apologetic glance before daring to look at you again. “I— I beg your pardon. I would not wish to be an intrusion upon your name day. Your father was kind enough to grant me to attend.”
The hall falls into sepulchral silence. The small conversations that bloom among the Targaryens die at once when Dunk’s words echo through the great chamber, their meaning plain, their offense unmistakable and unashamed. Even the youngest cease their play, and the servants stand frozen right where they are.
All turn to stare at Duncan now, and they look upon him with mortified eyes, as though none dare breathe.
Somewhere, someone fails to smother a laugh—most likely Aerion.
Egg’s mouth falls open in mortification. He looks up at his friend, his expression stricken, willing him to understand—to see—that what he has just said is wrong. Very wrong.
Duncan looks down at him when his small squire gives his shin a furtive kick, meant to draw his notice without the others seeing. He frowns, bewildered, not understanding what offense he has given now to deserve such a blow.
And when he looks back to the grown folk, he finds you watching him with an expression poised in perfect balance between horror and amusement. There is even the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of your lips, one you must press away when you turn your head toward your prince.
Baelor does not look pleased as you do.
His face is uncommonly stern, his brow drawn tight, his lips pressed into a hard, unforgiving line, he is trying to gather every shred of his restraint to keep from striking the foolish knight upon your name day.
“She is my wife, Ser Duncan,” he clarifies, his patience stretched thin, drawn so taut it borders upon offense. His hand comes to curl around your waist as you lean into him, lifting one hand to his chest in quiet reassurance.
You are still trying to hide that treacherous, amused smile.
“Oh—Seven—” Dunk breathes, realization striking him at last. He drops at once to his knees, bowing his head in reverence and shame. “I beg your forgiveness, Your Grace. I—I did not know. My manners are poor—you must understand, I never m–meant offense.”
“Of course not, Ser,” you reply kindly, looking down at him, still leaning against your husband’s chest. He lets out a soft sigh beneath your touch, your hand rising and falling with the steady motion of his breath.
Baelor makes a sharp, dismissive gesture for him to rise. “See that it does not happen again.”
“Of course!” Dunk scrambles to his feet at once, his face burning red with shame. “I only meant that she is so young and beautiful, and you—”
His frantic blue eyes fall upon Valarr, standing just behind his father. The prince shakes his head swiftly, his mismatched eyes widening in urgent warning, bidding him to hold his tongue.
Dunk obeys at once and his jaw snaps shut so hard it almost snaps apart.
“You witless boy,” Maekar rebukes him, his face twisted with disgust and disdain when the hedge knight dares glance his way, standing at your side like some old, ill-tempered hound. “That should cost you your fucking tongue.”
Your soft laughter breaks through the tension of the moment, and all turn to look at you, the heavy air easing when they all realize this offends you not half so deeply as it does them.
“I am certain Ser Duncan meant no malice, Maekar,” you say, seeking to soothe them—most of all your husband. “And I should not like to see any tongues torn out upon my name day, please.”
Baelor’s gaze remains fixed upon the mortified knight, his hand coming to rest upon the pommel of his sword—a blade he carries in quiet defiance of your pleas to remain unarmed this day. He thinks, perhaps, that he shall have a use for it against Ser Duncan.
“... shall we eat at last, then?” Comes Daeron’s unmistakable voice from somewhere within the hall. “I am hungry. And thirsty.”
“Of that, none have any doubt,” Maekar mutters, rolling his eyes as he returns to the table.
The others follow in his wake, granting you and your husband a moment alone.
Ser Duncan gives you another quick, apologetic bow before hastening out from beneath your husband’s gaze.
You cannot hold it any longer.
A breath of laughter escapes you, soft and bright, and you turn in Baelor’s arms to face him fully.
He is still watching the place where Duncan stood, his jaw tight, his shoulders rigid beneath your touch, as if the insult lingers in the air like a foul smell.
Your fingers curl more firmly into the front of his doublet to call for his attention.
“My prince,” you whisper with a smile when his two-toned eyes finally meet yours. “My heart...”
You rise onto your toes and press a gentle kiss to his cheek, his beard tickling against your skin. His body noticeably softens beneath your warm affection.
Another kiss follows, softer still, at the corner of his mouth.
And one more, sweet and lingering, upon his lips.
“Peace,” you plead humorously against his mouth, your fingers toying idly with the Hand of the King’s badge on his chest. “You look as though you mean to challenge the poor knight to single combat over a slip of the tongue, my love.”
“I am not amused,” he manifests, his tone remarkably sullen, yet you press another loving kiss to his lips to chase away his pettish little pout.
“No?” You lean closer, your voice drops into something more playful and teasing, “is it because he thinks you're old, husband?”
His lips tremble at your words, holding back an ironic smile, and his hands tighten at your waist, pulling you closer against him.
Baelor clicks his tongue, and your gaze falls to his lips as he does. “I am not old.”
“Well, considering my own age... truthfully, you are a bit older,” you continue to tease him, biting back a small laugh at his startled reaction. “Should I begin calling you father now, hm?”
His beautiful eyes narrow.
You grin—and steal another quick kiss before he can protest.
“Do not push your luck, wife,” he warns all the same, a playful little smile curving his lips. His hand slides down to the small of your back before he delivers a sharp, scolding swat to your backside, making you jolt lightly against him.
His brow arches slightly. “You are the only one left breathless and trembling like some frail, ancient little thing. Or must I remind you how you clung to me the other night and begged me to—?”
Your hand flies to his mouth, covering it before he can utter another word.
“My prince,” you hiss under your breath, though laughter trembles in your voice, your eyes wide with scandalized amusement. “You grow bold. We are in a hall full of eyes, and your sons sit but a stone's throw away.”
His lips move against your palm, pressing a lingering, heated kiss there that sends a shiver down your spine. Baelor gently pulls your hand away, though he does not let go of your fingers, his thumb stroking your knuckles with a slow, possessive rhythm, grazing your betrothal ring.
“Let them look,” he dismisses, leaning into you to kiss your lips properly, claiming them. And claiming you.
The heated kiss, at last, forces Duncan’s eyes away from you, and Baelor smiles against your mouth as he watches him behind you, finally closing his own eyes to savor the honeyed sweetness of your kiss.
Maekar Targaryen x Second! Wife! Dornish! Reader (No House Specified)
Synopsis: Inspired from a Season 4 Episode of Mad Men. Maekar's young second wife is struggling to adjust to her new life with the Targ family. A fiery climax is reached when insecurities rise to the surface and tensions heat up between Maekar and his wife.
CW: Smut, Angry Sex, kinda sorta dubious consent, some brat taming, spanking, Age Gap Relationship, Implied racializing of reader (Minors DNI!!)
"(Y/n)? (Y/N)?! Where the fuck is that woman?" Maekar demands of any nearby servants who may have witnessed his young wife storming out in a huff.
Maekar had no idea what just happened.
One moment, you were having the time of your life entertaining the nobles who had come to pay their respects to the king and to honor his queen whom the feast was held to celebrate her nameday, the next thing he saw you become visibly upset and for whatever reason had become cross with him.
Hence the reason why you left in a huff with tears in your eyes.
Maekar was concerned, and he was also confused to why the sudden change in mood.
"(Y/N)?!" you hear your husband call out right as you slammed the door to your shared apartments.
You only let out a huff in response, not in a mood to indulge him at this moment.
Tonight was supposed to be an evening for celebration, but you were feeling anything but celebratory, especially with recent news you overheard from the queen herself.
You hear the door open and Maekar's footsteps as he walked in. You huffed again and turned around, refusing to give your husband the satisfaction of looking you in the eye.
"(Y/N), what's wrong? What happened?" Maekar demands. "Wouldn't you like to know," you say with a crossed tone. "I wouldn't ask if I didn't fucking want to know," Maekar countered like it was obvious, "what has gotten into you, wife? You were so happy tonight, I thought everything was well."
"I thought so too," you say, tears starting to form in your eyes once again.
Maekar tried to reach out in an attempt to offer comfort, but you push him away. "Don't touch me," you say, pulling back, which made Maekar even more confused.
You then proceed to remove your dress, confounding your husband even more than he already was.
"(Y/N), what are you doing?" "The hour is late, and I wish to read and drink wine in solitude," you say, proceeding to light the nearest candles. You turn to see him staring as you were wearing nothing but your small clothes, "Don't look at me!" you demand, "you don't get to look at me!"
"How can I not when you're in that state?" Maekar huffed like it was obvious.
"I said DON'T LOOK AT ME!" you take a candle holder and tossed it at him, which Maekar was quick to dodge.
"What the fuck, (y/n)?! Have you gone fucking mad?!"
You ignore his question and continue lighting the candles. Maekar tried to stop you, but you push him away once again, "I said not to touch me! But you can't help yourself, can you? Especially since I look so much like her."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"You think I don't hear them talk?" you ask, "I don't hear the...vicious rumors and gossips at court? That the fourth son of King Daeron the Good took a young Dornish girl to wife because she looks so much like his late wife?"
"(Y/n), you are speaking nonsense," Maekar insists. "But it's true," you insist back, "I was able to ignore it for a time, I had initially brushed it off as Westorsi ignorance. Us Dornish all look alike, that's how it goes, yes? Those snakes at court look at me and confuse me for Her Grace the queen because Dornish women look the same in their eyes. I thought you and your family would be different, you and your brothers after all are half Dornish, and your children more so, your daughters resemble Dornish folk more so than your sons. I thought you were different, until I heard from the queen herself...how much I resemble the late Dyanna Dayne."
"(Y/n), that's not-" "Don't deny it," you say with seething rage, "I've seen her portrait from her younger days. That's what you saw when you first laid eyes on me, yes? I thought you loved me." "I do love you." "No you don't! You love her!" you sob out, tears falling from your eyes, "you'd do anything to have her back, even marry a woman who's barely older than your eldest son who looks as she did before her passing. You want to relive those days you had with her. You don't want me, you don't even want a second wife, you just want your first wife back! You want your children to have their mother again!"
Maekar was left speechless. He tried to reach out once again to comfort you, but you push him away, "Stop it! You don't get to touch me! You don't even get to look at me!" "And how can I not when you look like that?" Maekar repeats his previous question. "You don't get this!" you gesture to your half naked body, "you don't get her back. I'm not her! Dyanna is not coming back! She's dead! You need to get over her!"
You knew you went too far when you said that, and you knew it, but you were too driven by emotion to stop yourself, and it was too late to take it back.
Maekar, who was now driven by his own anger grabbed your arm. You try to push him away, but he tighten his grip, "Maekar, you're hurting me!"
He didn't let go. Instead, Maekar grabbed your other arm, despite you trying to fight him off, and push you against the wall.
You continue to fight him, but he keeps you restrained.
Now, the two of you were panting heavy, both filled with anger, but something else as well.
"You are a cruel woman to say such things," he says. "It may be cruel...but it is the truth." "You don't know what you're fucking talking about. I did not marry you because of Dyanna, I married you because I fell in love with you."
"I believed that once, but now I doubt if you are capable of holding love when you have closed off your heart for so long..."
To prove you wrong, Maekar pressed lips to yours in a rough kiss. You attempt to shove him back, but Maekar keep you pinned to the wall, grabbing your face, roughly at first, but then turned gentle surprisingly. "I hate you," you tell him. "No, you don't..." he says back. "Yes I do." "I love you." "No, you don't..."
Maekar kissed you again, pressing his body closer to yours, rubbing his hips to yours. The heated argument followed by the near overflowing passion has made him aroused. Truthfully, you felt the same, but you didn't want to give him the satisfaction. You were still mad at him.
You pushed him away once again, with intention of running away, but Maekar stands firm, this time guiding you to the floor.
He kissed you once more, you letting out a moan as a result. He ruts against you, his manhood straining against his breeches. He grabs your thigh, guiding your leg to wrap around him.
You rub against him as well, relishing in the friction but wanting more, though you wouldn't admit it.
Maekar continued to kiss you, until you bite his lower lip, causing him to curse and swat your behind.
"If you intend to act like a brat, then I shall treat you as one," Maekar said in a low tone, turning you around so your ass was fully facing him. He keeps one hand pinned to your back while the other continued to swat your behind.
Each swat tingled more than the last, and despite your anger and the stinging pain from his hand, you felt the pleasure coursing as he continued his discipline.
You tried to move away, but Maekar pulled you towards him, turning you over so you were laying on your back once again. He kept you pinned once again with one hand while he used the other hand to untie his trousers.
Harden cock sprung free, he pulled the bottom of your small clothes down and inserted himself into you. He barely gave you time to adjust as he began thrusting into you in a rough pace. One hand tightly gripped your hip while the other worked its way into between your legs to circle his thumb around your clit to give you pleasure.
You whine at his touch each time he rubs your sensitive spot. This continued until your walls squeezed his throbbing cock, and you came around him, Maekar following soon after.
You feel yourself melt into the soft rug underneath, while Maekar laid down on his back right next to you.
When the two of you came down from your highs, you place a hand over his chest, curling up next to him. He placed a hand over yours in response.
"Do you still hate me?" he asks.
To answer his question, you place a kiss to his cheek, the hairs of his beard tickling your nose.
You sigh before you spoke, "I've felt out of place since I came to King's Landing," you admit, "since I came to the Red Keep. Everyone at court stares at me, and they either see some Dornish woman or your second wife. Either way, they don't see me. They don't...I don't think people here even like me." "That's not true," Maekar said, "not everyone. The children adore you, and it's not because you look like their mother." "So, you don't deny it then," you said.
"That's not what I meant," Maekar said, "You look nothing like Dyanna, quite the opposite...but no less beautiful. No less intellectual either. That's what I love about you."
You smile, feeling assurance that what Maekar said was genuine. "I still hate it here," you admit, "I love your children, and your family, but everyone else I can't stand."
Maekar let out a snort of laughter in response, "I suppose those vultures at court can be quite intolerable," he says in agreement, "perhaps we are due for another journey to Summerhall to get away from it all. How does that sound wife? What say we stay there for maybe a month or two?"
"I'd prefer if we stayed for a full year," you said, nuzzling his cheek before placing another kiss.
Maekar smiled at the thought, "a year at Summerhall would be quite nice."
