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[xu-ren]

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Hi, nice to meet you! I’m Xu Ren and welcome to my blog!!! I hope that you enjoy your stay! Requests are currently closed but please read my rules before you send in requests! Requests that ignore the rules will be ignored or changed to follow the rules, ie. any requests for male readers will be changed to gender neutral. 

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[chiffonbunni]

being bunny iglesias's muse ۶ৎ

꒰ summary ꒱; you and bunny are on vacation in paris and he's decided you're the best view.

꒰ content ꒱; lotss of fluff

requested from this ask!

even with the most breathtaking sight present, his camera lens stayed centered on you throughout.

first it was when the both of you were walking through the streets. you were rambling about something, earning little nods from bunny every once in a while.

"c'mere, stand over here."

"huh? why?" you questioned, confusion written all over your face.

"trust me."

he raised the camera, gesturing for you to do a pose.

a soft click sounded, bunny checking over the photo again with a faint smile.

"attagirl."

you ambled back over to him, wondering why he was so eager to take a picture. "let me see," you urged, whining at him pulling the camera out of your reach, guiding you forward.

"not yet, cariño, c'mon, sigue caminando."

[keep walking]

next, it was on the way to your hotel. you'd spotted a kitten, bending down to pet it,

"d'you think it'd let me pick it up?"

"i don't know, try," he chuckles, getting his camera out.

"oh my gosh- look!" you squeal, holding the furball up next to your expression of pure joy.

a faint grin tugs on his face at your excitement, raising the camera, the shutter going off with a click.

you were squatting in a field of flowers, taking in the sight, smiling at him, "aren't these flowers gorgeous, baby?"

"they are. tilt your head up a littlee for me?"

"you're not even lookinnggg," you dragged, letting out a frustrated exhale.

he reminded you to smile again, the camera clicking right after.

"perfecto," he muttered under his breath.

"look, it's the eiffel tower!" you exclaim, smiling wider than ever, the lights glinting off the sparkle in your eye, making your features glow perfectly.

"mhmm," he hums absently, trying to center his camera onto your face, while still having the monument in the back. he knew you'd be pissed if he didn't

"baby, you're not looking at it-" you noticed, his gaze lingering on only you. "i know, mi amor. dame un momento, ¿sí?"

[give me a moment, yeah?]

"smile," he reminds you, the shutter going off a second after.

back at home, you decided to review the photos he'd taken, coming to the realization that every single one included you.

turned around, smiling, candids, blurry pictures of you laughing, all of it had you as the subject.

the ones he'd requested a pose from you in were only a measly fraction of what he'd captured.

a warm feeling settled in your heart.

"the tower's all blurry in this!" you giggle, tilting the camera to show it to him.

a lazy smirk grazes his lips, reaching out to ruffle your hair gently. "i'm just happy you look beautiful in it, mi vida."

© chiffonbunni

a/n: i'm soo so sorry if any of the spanish in this is wrong, please correct me ૮ ◞ ⸝⸝ ◟ა ! i do not speak the language and i simply researched how to say these things

also i have no idea what possessed me to make a banner for this but i love it

[yourlovesae]

sae never really cared too much about the paparazzi. the rapid flashes and clicks from the cameras were annoying of course, but other than that, sae wasn’t doing anything that could be deemed as scandalous, so why should he care?

you on the other hand weren’t too fond of them. not paranoid, but not exactly cordial with them either. sae knew his way around the media. he avoided biased interviews, dodged edgy questions, and most of all, gave quick-witted short answers so the interviewer would feel defeated and unable to continue. it always worked in his favor.

that’s how sae reassured you. there was no reason you should feel exploited or threatened by the media because he could handle it. he could burden that fear for the both of you, it was nothing to him.

so when the time had finally come for the paparazzi to get some new dirt on sae itoshi the japenese football prodigy, they had found the perfect outlet.

you.

dressed in a modest black dress with expensive rocks on your wrist, you held onto sae’s arm and took your routinely stroll through the quiet nighttime streets.

that silence was quickly broken by a ruffle in the bushes. you slowly craned your head toward the unfamiliar sound before realizing exactly what it was. your worst nightmare. you’d be naive to think that this time wouldn’t come sooner or later. you were dating a world renowned footballer for christ sakes.

“keep walking.”

noticing your step had faltered, sae gently pulled away from your grip and wrapped a comforting arm around your shoulder, shielding you from the prying eyes of the public. that made you relax, just enough to get yourself back on pace with his.

not knowing when they might show themselves again was nagging at you. being berated on social media was one of your worst fears, especially if you didn’t exactly do anything but date sae itoshi. the internet could be so cruel and parasocial, you knew that better than anyone.

then, a flash. hurried and sloppy, but bright enough that you could still see the glare from the camera.

you froze, unable to process the reality of what happened. although sae had been able to protect your figure now, even he was caught off guard by such a careless attempt at getting a photo that would spark some sort attention.

and to make matters even worse, the cameras had caught just enough of your face for people to search and scrape every corner of the internet to find you.

turning your attention toward sae, his eyes were a little wider than before, the tip of his ears turning a faint pink as he slowed his walking to a stop. the warmth of his arm around your shoulder was gone as his back was now facing you, standing just a mere inch away, but close enough to feel the irritation radiating off of his body.

he sighed, his breath visible in the cold air. “i guess it can’t be helped.”

you looked around in confusion and quirked an eyebrow. he was being much more mysterious than your normal sae. “w-what are you talking about sae? we should go home. before they-“

“we’ll have to give them a show. let’s make a headline.”

your mouth wanted to fall agape, but not even that would express the feelings brewing inside of you at this moment. this was supposed to be an undisclosed secret. never for the public eye to even get the slightest hint that sae itoshi was dating someone. now he wants to be a trending tag on twitter, like you’re buying that.

“sae, what are you talking ab-“

in one swift motion, sae’s hands found a comfortable place on your hips, bringing you impossibly close as his lips started a slow dance with yours. the kiss was feverish but gentle, the softness of his lips making up for the bruises his hands were about on leave on your hips.

completely throwing everything out of your mind except sae, your hands started running through his magenta locks. you tugged softly which led sae to release a very, very tiny whimper in your mouth which you swallowed as if you were dying of thirst. his lips started to trail down the column of your neck, leaving fresh, sloppy wet hickeys wherever he could access.

you guys were about to damn near fuck on this pavement, tongues sliding against each others, breath mingling as your chests heaved from lack of oxygen.

“oh my god, okay! we get it!” a deep, impatient voice broke the two of you out of your trance and pulled you both away from each others flushed lips.

you saw a lanky figure holding a heavy, black camera on their left shoulder as they stared at you with what looked like disgust.

yeah.. you guys were fucked.

[gyarujo]

꒰ 糸師冴 ꒱ › sae accidentally hard launches you mdni. pro player! sae itoshi x f! reader. inspired by mbappe so ooc lol.

sae itoshi despises social media with every fiber of his being. it’s too lukewarm for him. all his accounts are managed by some pr team that solely posts professionally shot photos of him and he only opens instagram for the following reasons:

to repost reels of his match highlights that re al’s social media team tags him in,

to reluctantly comment on shidou’s posts after receiving an absurd amount of threatening texts from him,

and to like your posts and stories within seconds of you uploading them.

the latter being the main reason he bothers to check the app.

you’ve been together since you were both awkward teenagers but sae is still adamant about keeping your relationship private. not because he’s ashamed — far from it — but because his fanbase is, for lack of a better word, unhinged.

they know he’s been in a relationship for years; he’s never denied it in interviews. what they don’t know is who he’s dating. and with how private the midfielder is, most fans had long since accepted that they’d never find out. but as fate would have it, they get their answer a few hours after re al wins the uefa champions league.

sae’s just gotten out of the shower, a towel slung low on his hips as he rummages through his bag for a fresh set of clothes.

“took you long enough” you sigh, you’ve been waiting for him on the king-sized bed — wearing nothing but his spare re al kit — for what feels like forever.

sae glances up, his usual detached expression softening for just a fraction of a second as his teal eyes sweep over you. he pads toward the bed, the carpet muffling his steps until he’s right in front of you, leaning over. his fingers brush against your collarbone as he traces the collar of the jersey.

“you’re wearing my kit again ?” he shakes his head fondly before saying, “it’s not even your size” he emphasizes his point by tugging gently at the sleeve hanging well past your elbow.

“it still looks better on me.” you grin as you look up at him.

“i think it looks better off you.” his gaze drops from your eyes to your lips and then he’s kissing you. veiny hand moving from the jersey to cup the back of your neck, holding you in place as he pours everything he felt during the match into your parted lips.

he barely pulls away, just enough to grab his phone from the nightstand without breaking the kiss completely. the screen illuminates his sharp features, casting a pale blue glow on his cheekbones as he opens the camera. he needs to commit this to memory, to capture this exact moment before he’s too lost in you to think straight.

there are few things sae itoshi loves more than taking pictures of you. he has thousands of them on his phone; candid shots of you sleeping, photos of you in his clothes, in your own, in nothing at all. on rare occasions he’ll post a picture or two on his close friends story. his way of showing you off without exposing you to his fans.

he doesn’t need to ask you to pose. you’re already turning onto your stomach, propping yourself up on your elbows, and looking back at him over your shoulder. you reach back with one hand and point directly at the number ten between your shoulder blades. the soft click echoes in the hotel room as he captures the image. it’s perfect. you’re perfect. he’d be an idiot not to post it.

he’s quick, thumbs flying across the screen as he types out the caption, ‘the re al trophy’. he hits what he thinks is the right button to share this moment with his small, curated list: rin, his teammates, and shidou — who will undoubtedly send a tirade of messages saying he should be the one celebrating with sae instead of you. he tosses the phone onto the bed beside you, his attention immediately returning to more pressing matters. i.e. taking his jersey off you

he’s leaning in to press a kiss to your shoulder when his phone vibrates. once. twice. then far too incessant for a close friends story. he breaks away with a frustrated groan, snatching his phone up. to his surprise and dismay, it’s not just shidou being shidou for once. but a tsunami of notifications from his official account.

his eyes widen as he opens instagram and sees it: the picture of you, in his kit, pointing at his number. posted to his public story, not close friends. thirty seconds ago. he scrambles to delete it even though he knows it’s already too late.

“shit” his thumb hovers uselessly over the screen as the notifications continue to pour in, each one a fresh wave of public exposure. the internet moves fast when it comes to sae itoshi.

you raise a brow, turning to look at him, “what’s wrong ?”

he doesn’t answer right away. his gaze is fixed on the ceiling, but you can tell he’s not actually looking at the ornate plaster. his jaw is tight, muscle ticking beneath his skin, and his eyes are clamped shut.

years of privacy, of sidestepping paparazzi and shutting down invasive questions, of keeping the person he loves safely beyond the reach of public scrutiny — all undone in less than thirty seconds.

he drops the phone onto the bed as if it’s burned him, running a hand through his damp maroon hair, “i posted it” he mutters dejectedly. and when you remain unfazed he adds, “publicly.”

you blink, processing his words. the indifferent look on your face, completely at odds with the panic etched onto his. “oh.” you say, your voice surprisingly calm. “well, that’s one way to do it.”

sae stares at you like you’ve just grown a second head. “that’s all you have to say ?” his voice is strained, “you’re not upset ?”

“why would i be ?” he lets out a sigh of relief, picking up his phone again. his pr manager’s name is flashing on the screen, but he ignores it. he clicks on the story a fan account’s tagged him in. they’ve already zoomed in on your face, trying to match you with old, blurry pictures from the stands. it won’t take them long to find your account. you reach out to still his frantic scrolling by placing a hand on his wrist. “are you upset, sae ?”

“obviously” he stops scrolling, his thumb frozen on the screen, but he can’t bring himself to look at you, “i’m very upset with myself.”

“why ?” you press gently, your thumb stroking the inside of his wrist.

“because i was careless” he admits, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. “and i would’ve preferred to do this properly.”

you shift, moving to kneel in front of him, your hands resting on his tense shoulders. you start to knead the tight muscles, feeling him gradually relax under your touch. “define ‘properly’”

he doesn’t answer right away. he leans into your touch, his head bowing slightly as you work out a particularly stubborn knot between his shoulder blades. “i don’t know . . . i just wanted it to be on our terms. when we were ready. not because i fumbled with my phone like an idiot.”

sae itoshi, who can slot a penalty past the world’s best keeper without so much as trembling, is freaking out over an accidental hard launch. you can’t help but laugh. it makes his shoulders, which were slowly relaxing under your touch, stiffen all over again.

“don’t laugh at me. it’s not funny,” he mutters, though there’s no real heat behind his words. “not in the slightest.”

“you’re right, it’s not funny, it’s adorable” you lean in and press a kiss that makes his frustration fade away to his lips.

deep down, beneath his initial panic, sae’s glad. he’s glad because he knows that once the world gets over the excitement of finally knowing who you are, he can finally show you off the way he’s always wanted to. he can finally hold your hand walking down the street, kiss you in the stands after a goal, and take you to those fancy award dinners he’s always avoided. the thought of it all makes his heart race. some mistakes are worth making.

© GYARUJO 2026. please do not plagiarize, repost, or translate any of my works on here or any other websites. do not feed to ai

[luvst4rc0r3]

The apartment was suspiciously quiet.

Usually, when you came home from class, Rin would be watching match footage with his headphones on, barely acknowledging your existence until you stole one of his earbuds.

Today, there was nothing.

“…Rin?”

No answer.

You wandered into the living room.

Empty.

Kitchen.

Empty.

Bedroom…

There he was.

Fast asleep.

Curled up on top of the comforter, still wearing one of his training jackets.

You blinked

Rin never napped.

Ever.

You quietly set your bag down and knelt beside the bed.

His hair was a mess, falling over his eyes. His breathing was slow and even, the tension that was usually etched into his face completely gone.

You reached out, brushing a strand of hair away from his forehead.

The second your fingers touched him, his hand shot out and wrapped around your wrist.

His eyes cracked open.

“…You’re home.”

“Mhm.”

“What time is it?”

“Five.”

“I overslept.”

“You needed it.”

He let go of your wrist, but only long enough to sit up.

Without saying a word, he reached for you instead.

You smiled.

“Aw, are you asking for a hug?”

“No.”

“You literally have your arms out.”

“…Come here.”

You laughed and climbed onto the bed anyway.

The moment you settled beside him, Rin buried his face in your shoulder.

No teasing.

No complaints.

No pretending he didn’t want affection.

Just…you.

His arms tightened around your waist.

You gently ran your fingers through his hair.

“Hard practice?”

“…Yeah.”

“You pushed yourself too much again?”

A quiet hum.

“You know your body isn’t a machine.”

“I know.”

“You say that every time.”

“I know.”

You smiled to yourself.

For someone who struggled to express himself, Rin had become surprisingly easy to read.

The tighter he held you, the harder his day had been.

The quieter he was, the more exhausted he felt.

The fact that he’d fallen asleep before you got home meant he’d reached his limit.

After a few minutes, you felt his breathing even out again.

“…Rin?”

No response.

You pulled back just enough to look at him.

He’d fallen asleep sitting up, his forehead resting against yours.

You couldn’t help but laugh softly.

“So clingy,” you whispered.

Without opening his eyes, he mumbled,

“…Only with you.”

And somehow, half-asleep, barely conscious, those three words felt more sincere than any perfectly planned confession ever could.

I’m giving my friend my account name💔 wish me luck

I WANT FOOD AND SLEEP💤🍓🍰

[1ix1n]

nagi is completely drunk on your kisses <33

the moment your lips met his, nagi sighs into your mouth.

he doesn’t stay still for long. his hand glides up the back of your neck, long fingers tangling deep into your hair at the nape to hold you in place. he tilts his head, angling his mouth so the kiss fits deeper.

every time you try to part your lips to catch your breath, nagi follows instantly. he catches your mouth mid-inhale, stealing another kiss before you can draw air, then another. his lips move against yours with a slow, deliberate cadence, though the restless tilt of his head betrays an unmistakable impatience underneath. 

he barely lets one press finish before starting the next, catching your lower lip between his own, holding it for one aching second before drawing you back in.

his other hand settles at your waist, fingers digging gently into your hip as he hauls you across the cushions until your chest is pressed flush against his. suddenly, he is everywhere—his scent surrounding you, his warm breath fanning across your cheeks, his mouth seeking yours at uneven, eager angles whenever you try to shift. 

a low hum vibrates in his chest when your hands slide up to cup his jaw, and he leans into your touch like he's trying to drink the energy straight from your lips.

when you finally manage to pull back, gasping for air, nagi follows blindly with his eyes still closed, pressing one last lingering kiss to the corner of your mouth before he finally lets you go.

the physical effect on him is immediate and total.

a deep, scarlet blooms across his pale cheekbones, spreading all the way to the tips of his ears. when his grey eyes finally open, they're heavy and thoroughly loopy, blinking sluggishly as if his brain had lagged several seconds behind his body. a dazed smile curls the corners of his swollen lips.

"whoa..." he murmurs, his voice slurred at the edges and completely undone. 

he lets his head fall heavily forward, resting his forehead against your shoulder while his arms remain locked firmly around your waist. his chest heaves with shallow, uneven breaths that warm the skin of your neck.

"everything's... spinning," he mutters against your collarbone.

"it was just a kiss, seishiro." you chuckle, brushing your fingers through the messy locks at the back of his head. 

nagi lifts his head slowly, looking up at you with hazy, thoroughly intoxicated eyes that immediately drop right back down to your mouth.

"mnnh…" he groans, grip tightening at your waist as he pushes himself up, hovering barely a millimeter away. "i need more."

his lips brush yours in a soft, sleepy request, completely undone by you. "c'mere… i'm not done with you yet."

serving up this order – [ check the receipt! ] ⤷ amen. double post!! hope you enjoyed ദ്ദി◝ ⩊ ◜.ᐟ

© 1ix1n 2026 ⸝⸝ pls do not copy or feed my work into ai, ty .ᐟ

[xu-ren]

Kiera marries Valarr AU

Pairings:

Valarr Targaryen x Aella Targaryen (OC)

Valarr Targaryen x Kiera of Tyrosh

Aerion Targaryen x Aella Targaryen (OC)

Warnings: Targecest, spousal neglect, character death, mentions of pregnancy and pregnancy loss, mentions of blood.

Other works in this series can be found here.

To Kiera, Valarr was the husband she expected. He was dutiful, in that he visited her chambers thrice a moon on the days decided by the maesters to be best for conceiving a child. He never stayed after he had spilled his seed into her, but neither was he unkind when he did so. Despite the fact that she knew that he did so out of duty, Valarr still ensured that she found pleasure in the act. 

She lived for those words that would spill out of his mouth as he pounded into her. Pet names he would never utter in the light of the day spilled out of his mouth without end. “Oh sweetling, you feel like heaven,” Valarr would grunt as he pounded into her cunt. “My beautiful lovely girl,” he would say and it truly felt like he was fully her husband and only hers in those moments. Once, early in their marriage, she had looked at his face only to realise that those beautifully mismatched eyes of his were screwed shut even as he spilled into her. When he opened his eyes, she swore she saw a flash of disappointment flash across his face. 

Those perfect nights never lasted, not when Valarr left her bed soon after, taking his warmth with him. He never stayed once the deed was done, no matter how she begged until she learnt to stop. Despite that, the hope that he would one day stay till the morning never truly died until that fateful day. 

As she laid awake, trying to sleep in the cold bed she should have gotten used to but could not, she heard noise coming from Valarr’s chambers next to hers. “Curiosity killed the cat,” she had once heard people say, and curiosity killed what hope she had left. Though she knew that she should not, she had watched through a crack in the door of his chambers as he entered a hidden passageway behind his bookshelf. 

She did not follow him that night nor any other night when she caught him sneaking away, she did not truly need to, there was only one place Valarr would go at this time of the night. She had wondered when they were given these apartments why Valarr had insisted on giving her the bigger chamber, but now she knew. 

♡♡♡

Valarr was dutiful in that he never shamed her in front of the court or even in private. He remained by her side whenever they were to appear together, the second-in-line to the Iron Throne and his princess consort, though his eyes often strayed. Despite that, he never approached his cousins in ways that would draw reproach, not that it was likely to when all of the court knew of the closeness of the cousins. 

Though he was her husband, he had never truly taken her side over his cousins. Despite being married for over 6 years, she had never truly taken control of the younger ladies of the court as should have been her duty. She should have been their leader as the princess consort of the second-in-line to the throne, yet that role remained firmly in the hands of the Targaryen princesses, Princess Aella and Princess Aelora. 

When she had gathered the courage to complain to her husband, Valarr had simply shrugged. “Don't worry,” he said, “Aella does not mean any harm.” And that was that. Valarr would not hear more on the matter, and she was forced to swallow her pride and watch as her rightful role was occupied. 

♡♡♡

Kiera hated being pregnant, though she knew that it was her most important duty. Once the maesters confirmed that she was with child, Valarr would cease to visit her chambers at all. His duty was done for the moment after all, and she was ever only duty to him.

It was not to say that he deprived her of worldly means at all, as her ladies had instructions to provide her with anything she wished for. No matter how unreasonable her requests, they were always fulfilled. The only thing he deprived her of was his presence, little as it already was.

Each Targaryen child she carried drained her, leaving her weak and shivering, exhausted in ways that could be felt in her aching bones. And oh, how her bones ached, leaving her too exhausted to even envision leaving her bed on her worst days. And those days came quicker and more often with each successive child, each one draining more and more out of her. Even worse than the aching of her body was the aching of her head, it felt like someone had taken a hammer to her skull and it forced her to remain in her chambers, shying away from both light and sound. Her chambers often resembled confinement chambers early on, keeping both light and sound out and Valarr would use her condition to move from their shared apartments, so not to bother her, he would say. She did not need to ask to know where he likely went, and she truly did not wish to know either. 

As the children wore on her, she lost more and more of her role in the Red Keep and as Valarr’s wife. Though her goodfamily was never cruel about it, and as a matter of fact, it often looked like kindness, they absorbed her role without complaint and never returned it. Each successive babe took from her things that could not be returned, from her health to her role, until she was a diminished version of the woman who had come to the Red Keep all those years ago and she was left with no choice but to accept her fate. 

Once upon a time, she had tried to reclaim her role but her goodfamily had pushed back, gently but firmly. She had tried to help, though it should have been her role, in organising tea parties after her confinement had ended, and yet, Princess Aella had simply smiled and said that her health came first. In the end, she barely managed an hour before she felt so faint that she had to return to her bed. There were multiple times that she had to skip her public engagements because she was so plagued by exhaustion that she could not leave her bed, until she rarely appeared in public at all. Despite all of that, her goodfamily never reprimanded or pushed, content to allow her to fade into the background. 

Despite the army of maesters and midwives who hovered over her every time she was with child since her second stillbirth, none of her babies survived for long, if at all. The first prince came two moons early, small and precious and oh so very still. The second prince came at ten moons, and she had sobbed with relief when she heard his cry after 16 hours of labour. “Baelon,” Valarr had proclaimed when he brought him to her, swaddled tightly. He had been perfect, her little prince with her brown skin and Valarr’s brown hair. And yet, he did not even live for a day. She had mourned her little princes, sobbing as Valarr held her and she hated the part of her that wanted Valarr’s love and warmth so badly even then. 

She was not blind to the fact that Valarr did not mourn with her, his face carved from stone as he held her and yet, she had heard him mourn in his cousins’ arms when she wandered the halls in her grief. The whispers started then, that her womb was cursed, that she was too weak to carry a dragon’s child, that perhaps Valarr should turn away from her and marry another that could give him the Targaryen heirs he needed. Valarr had refused, though she had never understood why. 

The whispers only grew louder and louder after her third loss, a princess with Valarr’s pale skin and her hair, born too early to live only to quiet down after her fourth child, another prince, identical to the daughter she had lost, who had lived. For a time, she believed that she had fulfilled her duty, and even her goodfamily, who had cooled towards her after her third loss warmed up to her again. 

Her goodfamily came in droves, cooing at the sweet little prince as she watched from her bed, unwilling to take her eyes off her only surviving child. And yet, her hard worn prince only lived for 52 days, leaving her once again a mourning mother of none. By then, her body and truly, her mind, had been worn from her repeated childbirths and losses, and the maesters had prescribed for her to rest. And so, she faded from her goodfamily’s mind as she stayed within her chambers. By the time the maesters allowed her to try again, she found that time had passed her by. The court, ever changing, had forgotten her while she recovered, though not fully, the limp and bent back she gained never truly went away.

♡♡♡

Though she knew that it was a terrible breach of etiquette, and unwelcomed besides, she found herself at the door of Princess Aella and Prince Aerion’s chambers. The guards at the door hesitated at her approach, yet she ignored them as she limped past them into the chambers. As she had expected, Prince Aerion, Princess Aella and Valarr were breaking their fast in the solar. 

Upon her entry, Prince Aerion stood up so quickly that his chair fell behind him, devastatingly loud in the silence that had overtaken a room that was only just filled with laughter. “What are you doing here?” Prince Aerion questioned sharply as he stalked threateningly towards her. She had no doubt that he did not care for her answer. 

“Aerion, kelītīs (stop),” Valarr barked, stopping Prince Aerion in his tracks as he too stood, both hands on the table. His head swung towards his cousin, furious as they argued heatedly in High Valyrian as Princess Aella watched, her head cocked in a way that was both fond and genuinely amused, an intrinsic understanding that she was safe despite being between two angry princes, a safety that Kiera had never known in her seven years of marriage. With a growl, Prince Aerion flung himself on his chair next to his sister as she took his hand in hers, rubbing gentle circles into it. 

Valarr turned his eyes on her, looking at her knowingly for a moment before gesturing to the seat that Celia had added to the table, “sit.” She sunk heavily into the chair, already exhausted just from walking here from her apartment. 

“What are you here for, Kiera?” Valarr asked. ‘Kiera, always her name, never an endearment or even wife,’ she thought bitterly.  

“I will have that tea,” she pointed to the teapot near Princess Aella, trying to give herself a moment to swallow her bitter thoughts. 

“That is not for you,” Valarr snapped sharply, his voice like a whip, startling her. He may never have loved her, but he was rarely ever so sharp with her. Involuntarily, she felt herself shrank back and Valarr softened marginally. “It's moon tea,” he explained, “for Aella.”

‘Moon tea,’ she thought, feeling faint. She knew what it was, had heard the ladies of the court and even some of the servants whisper of it, a herbal abortifacient used to prevent or end pregnancies. Her one small triumph over the princess had been that despite nearly five years of marriage and the carnal desires of the prince and princess, well known through the entire court, the princess had not been with child once. Though her children may have all been taken from her too soon, the princess’ womb had not quickened once and as cruel as that was, it had brought her some small comfort.  That small comfort was now taken from her, with the knowledge that the princess’ lack of children was her own doing, done with the knowledge of her husband.

Before she could even form a word, her own husband, Valarr’s, words felt like he had poured cold water on her. “She is too young for a babe,” he said, painfully gently fond as he stroked her silvery gold locks, the princess’ eyes closing as she nuzzled closer. ‘Young, young?’ Kiera was both numb and furious all at once. Princess Aella was one-and-twenty, a woman grown and bedded, a woman who she had watched destroy knights twice her age and best Valarr, but she was still too young to bear a babe? By one-and-twenty, Kiera had borne and lost three children, her two precious princes and one princess, all taken by the stranger as soon as they left her womb. 

She struggled to her feet, too angry and broken and numb all at once to look at her husband at all. “I came to tell you that I am with child, husband,” she spat out before limping out of the room, uncaring of how many rules she was breaking at once. Behind her, Princess Aella shoved a lemon tart into Prince Aerion’s mouth, stopping his words. 

♡♡♡

Despite all of the odds, her princess, her little Alyssa, though weak, survived. She was slow to grow and there were many a times Kiera believed that she would not live, but she survived, though it was difficult to say that she thrived. But even as she wished that her daughter was enough, she was not, for she was not a prince, and the realm needed princes, not princesses. 

Valarr was by no means an absent father, though he was as distant from his daughter as he was from his wife, preferring as always his cousins over them. He had spent more time with them since her birth than he ever had with Kiera alone, though it was by no means plenty. That was how Kiera knew that Princess Aella was with child, for suddenly, even the small amount of time Valarr spent with them vanished like morning mist on a warm day.

She knew before the court, before the celebrations, before all else because Valarr went from spending his spare time from his duties with his cousins to finding every excuse under the sun to be with his cousins. She watched as he hovered over his cousin like one of her midwives, within reach nearly all hours of the day, letting them into his office just to slumber within his sight. She watched his attentiveness like it was a dagger to her heart. And she watched as her poor precious princess asked about the father who had forgotten about her. 

Though Valarr was distant in all ways, at least, though it was a small cold comfort, he did not forget his duty of siring an heir, and when the celebrations rang for Princess Aella and Prince Aerion, Kiera was once again plagued by nausea and a bone deep exhaustion, deeper and heavier than ever before. 

But this time was different, for Valarr had forgotten all sense of duty to her. He hovered over his cousin in public, in front of the court as he had in private, as near as her husband, nearly tripping over his own feet in haste whenever she called, and call she did, constantly and shamelessly. The larger she swelled, the more she called upon both her husband and her cousin, until it seemed that they never left her side at all. And the court only encouraged it, cooing at the devotion of the princes, their attentiveness and their care, as if they had forgotten how her husband had been. Kiera could not help the envy in her heart as she stood alone, watching the difference in treatment as she was forgotten by all. 

It did not help that pregnancy treated the princess well, as if the world itself was determined to make the two of them opposites. Whereas pregnancy seemed to drain Kiera, it only made Princess Aella all the more beautiful. Her already beautiful silvery-gold hair seemed fuller and thicker, enhancing her beauty until she seemed to glow from within. Bards and knights and squires and lords alike tripped over themselves to lavish praise and songs upon the princess, their eyes barely straying from her even at the threat of losing their eyes and even the ladies of the court could not help but smile when catching sight of her. As the princess swelled, the songs comparing her to The Mother only ever grew alongside. 

Even as she slowed as her pregnancy weighed on her, the court did not move past her nor forget her as it did to Keira, but slowed down for her instead. The songs grew shorter and slower, gatherings moved from the gardens to indoor salons, the meats replaced by greens at feasts, even the seats grew ever plentiful. Kiera was grateful, in a way, for the changes made her life easier as well, yet it grated on her that none was ever done for her. The goodfamily that had hidden Kiera and acted like it was a favour to her made space for the princess without question, without thought, as if it was but a given. Not just Valarr and Prince Aerion, but the rest of Targaryen of their generation watched her like hawks, ready to spring to action from a mere wince alone. 

♡♡♡

On a bright summer day, where the sun was high in the sky and the birds were singing prettily, Princess Aella went into labour as if even the gods had ensured that the day had to be beautiful for the arrival of her child. Kiera knew naught of it, for she had taken to her chambers a moon prior, her aching body too exhausted to even fathom leaving her bed, let alone her chambers, and her only company her ladies, who did not consider informing her, and her young daughter. 

Even the midwives and maesters who were her constant in her prior pregnancies were nowhere to be found, running to the princess at the barest hint of false labour till they camped outside her chambers, waiting for the fateful day. Kiera knew naught of that, nor that the princess had confined herself to her chambers half a moon prior, joined by Valarr and Prince Aerion on accounts of her false labour pains. 

All she knew was this, that she had awoken in her bed alone, her ladies having left for news of the princess, and her lifeblood spilled from between her legs. She had screamed, louder than she thought her battered lungs capable of, sobbing from the pain and the fear, of the terror of losing another babe as the guard burst in. She had begged for her husband, for Valarr, for someone, anyone to save her child. 

She did not know that the same Valarr who had waited until he was called upon after her births to enter had forgone all sense of propriety to join his cousin in her birthing chambers, taking on the role of her ladies in comforting, encouraging and supporting her through her labour. She knew naught of that, only that there were but two pairs of hands and a thin reedy unsteady voice of the apprentice maester as she birthed her child, too early, too small and too quiet through a blinding haze of pain into the hands of The Stranger. 

♡♡♡

The next time she sees Valarr is after the funeral of, as she was told, a princess. She had not been strong enough to attend, nor truly, to leave her bed, the labours too strenuous on her battered body. Though Valarr carried an air of solemnness for their shared loss, he did not seem overly mournful and she hated him for it. 

For three days and three nights, she laid upon her bed as her ladies cared for her, gossiping as they did of Princess Aella and her daughter, a princess that they have named Maelle. According to her ladies, young Princess Maelle was a perfect image of her mother, a true Targaryen princess with a wisp of silvery blonde hair and the violet eyes of Prince Aerion. They spoke on how Prince Valarr and Prince Aerion barely left her side, giggling about their devotion as they did and wishing that they would one day marry husbands as devoted as the princes, seemingly forgetting that Valarr was her husband, not Princess Aella’s. 

On the fourth day, her health took a turn for the worse as she suffered from a bout of diarrhoea though she seemed to recover from as the day went by. However, by the following night, she was besieged by a burning fever, nausea and heavy bleeding, once again soaking her bed with crimson lifeblood similar to less than a week ago when she had lost her princess. 

The maesters were roused to her bedside, though she barely registered anyone or anything at all as the fever ate at her consciousness and yet, their tonics seemed to have helped, for her fever broke the very next morning. After she had been cleaned and her bed replaced, she sent for her daughter, needing the comfort of her only surviving child after losing another. 

Unexpectedly, Alyssa did not come alone, but was accompanied by her father. “Mama, mama,” her darling daughter cried out as she clambered ungainly onto the bed. “Auntie pretty.” It felt like ice had run through her veins, freezing out what fever was left in her blood at her daughter’s words. Colder than she had ever dared, as if being near death gave her a clarity she never had before, she hissed at her husband furiously,”You brought her to Aella?”

Princess Aella had never been outright unkind to her daughter, merely distant and uninterested, the same way she had treated Kiera since she had married Valarr. But her brother and husband was another matter entirely, he loathed her as if she were a bug beneath his boot, and he loathed her daughter the same, her poor brown haired, brown eyed, brown skinned daughter, not a single sign of her Targaryen blood in sight. It was both inconceivable and shameful to the proud prince obsessed with his Targaryen blood. 

Her husband, unknowing or perhaps uncaring, merely blinked. “I wanted her to meet Maelle. I wanted her to be as close to her as I am to Aella and Aerion,” he said as he fondly stroked his daughter’s hair. All of her anger seemed to deflate at once, for that was the first time she had seen Valarr so fond of his own daughter, perhaps little Princess Maella could help to foster a bond between father and daughter. 

That would be the last Kiera ever saw of either her daughter or her husband, for her health deteriorated rapidly that very night, sending her into periods of delirium and unconsciousness with no end in sight until finally, her frail battered body gave up the fight only twelve short days after the birth of her sixth and final child in her nine years of marriage to Valarr Targaryen. 

♡♡♡

Notes:

Inspired by a conversation with my friend about how most of the women in The Song of Ice and Fire survived childbirth, when that was not the case in history. 

This was loosely based on Queen Katherine of Aragon’s miscarriages and Jane Seymour’s childbed fever. In the Tudor era, a pregnancy was not confirmed until the child quickened, which was not until the 4th or 5th month, while 80% of pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first trimester, hence why the miscarriages all seem so late in this fic. 

♡♡♡

Timeline 

- Marriage of Kiera and Valarr - 207 AC

- Marriage of Aella and Aerion - 209 AC

- Kiera’s death - 216 AC

- Discovery of Aella’s consumption of moontea - 214 AC (Aella is 21)

- Pregnancies

- 1st : 208 AC (Aged 18)

- 2nd : 209 AC (Aged 19)

- 3rd : 211 AC (Aged 21)

- 4th : 212 AC (Aged 22)

- 5th : 214 AC (Aged 24)

- 6th : 216 AC (Aged 26)

[valarrtheyoungprince]

The First One is Always Yours

Pairing: Valarr Targaryen x Reader (Modern Football AU)​ Synopsis: The stadium is packed. Supporters chanting his name. Cameras following him. Commentators praising him as football's golden boy. Yet before before kickoff, Valarr is distracted.

By the time Valarr Targaryen looked toward your seat for the fifth time, the stadium had already begun chanting his name.

Seventy thousand voices rolled down from the stands in violent, rhythmic waves.

Val-arr. Val-arr. Val-arr.

Floodlights burned white against the November dark. The pitch shone beneath them, cut into pristine stripes and wet enough that the studs of his boots left brief black wounds in the grass. Camera operators moved along the touchline with lenses trained on him. The giant screens above the north stand displayed his face in ruthless clarity: light brown hair sleeked back with water and gel, mouth set in concentration, the sharp planes of his features made even more striking by the black and red of King’s Landing United.

The commentators were already speaking about him.

They always were.

The most expensive forward in Westeros football.

The golden boy.

The player who had transformed United’s attack within a single season.

The man who had scored in six consecutive matches and carried the club through an injury crisis with the kind of composure pundits liked to call inevitable.

Valarr heard none of it.

He was staring at an empty seat.

Section 112. Row F. Seat 18.

Your usual place.

His gaze moved away only when the assistant coach shouted his name.

“Valarr.”

He turned.

“You listening?”

“Of course.”

The coach’s expression suggested otherwise.

Around him, his teammates stretched, exchanged short passes, adjusted tape, and performed the private rituals footballers claimed were not superstition. Jace Velaryon bounced twice on his toes before every kickoff. Daven Lannister retied his right boot even when the laces were already tight. Garlan Tyrell touched the grass and then his chest.

Valarr rubbed his thumb beneath the white tape around his left wrist.

The thin thread hidden under it had been worn smooth over the years. Once, it had been red and black. Now it was faded to something between rust and brown, the knots tightened by sweat, rain, blood, and repeated repair.

The sponsorship representative hated it.

The club’s kit manager had once suggested replacing it with a clean replica.

Valarr had stared at him until he stopped speaking.

His fingers found the smallest knot.

Still there.

You were not.

The final warmup began.

Players moved through sharp passing patterns while the stadium announcer read the lineups. Valarr collected the ball at his feet, opened his body, and sent it toward Garlan with enough force that the midfielder had to step backward to control it.

“Easy,” Garlan muttered.

Valarr ignored him.

He looked toward the tunnel.

No sign of you.

You were always late by precisely enough to annoy him and never late enough to miss kickoff. You complained that his stadium security made attending a match feel like entering a foreign embassy. You refused the private entrance he had arranged because, according to you, walking through the ordinary gates was part of the experience.

He had told you that being crushed against thousands of drunk supporters should not constitute an experience.

You had told him to stop being dramatic.

Then you had arrived at your seat with seven minutes to spare and waved at him as though you had not left him checking the tunnel every thirty seconds.

Tonight, kickoff was three minutes away.

Your seat remained empty.

A ball struck his ankle and Valarr looked down.

Jace stood several feet away, hands on his hips. “She coming?”

Valarr trapped the ball beneath his boot.

“I don’t know.” The answer came out sharper than he intended.

Jace lifted both eyebrows.

“All right.”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because you’ve looked at her seat more times than you’ve looked at the opposition.”

“I’m checking the stand.”

“For structural damage?”

Valarr sent the ball back hard enough that Jace caught it against his shin with a curse.

“Fuck off.”

Jace grinned and jogged away.

The players were called toward the center circle.

Valarr took his place beside the opposing captain. The referee performed the coin toss. The crowd rose louder, scarves lifted above heads, flashes of red and black filling the stands.

He looked once more.

Empty.

His jaw tightened.

The whistle blew.

For the first ten minutes, he told himself it made no difference.

You were not part of the tactical plan.

You were not responsible for the opposing back line, the narrow press, or the way Storm’s End had crowded the midfield. You had nothing to do with his first touch or the timing of his runs.

He knew that.

He had played finals in foreign countries with hostile crowds screaming abuse every time he neared the ball. He had played through ankle pain, fever, transfer speculation, family scandals, and the anniversary of his grandfather’s death. He had scored penalties while entire stadiums prayed he would miss.

One empty seat should not matter.

In the twelfth minute, he mistimed a run and was caught offside.

In the seventeenth, he lost possession near the halfway line and Storm’s End broke on the counter.

In the twenty-third, he shot from an impossible angle instead of passing to Garlan, who had acres of space inside the box.

Garlan threw out his arms.

Valarr turned away.

The manager shouted from the technical area.

“Keep the width, Targaryen!” Valarr did not acknowledge him.

In the thirty-first minute, the referee ignored a challenge at the edge of the penalty area.

Valarr spun around. “That’s a foul.”

The referee jogged backward. “Play on.”

“He took my leg.”

“You stayed on your feet.”

“So I’m punished for not falling?”

“Enough.”

Valarr followed him for several steps. “That’s twice now.”

A hand caught the back of his shirt. Jace pulled him away before the referee could reach for a card.

“Stop.”

“He’s blind.”

“He’s reaching for his pocket.”

“Then he can book me.”

“He will.”

Valarr dragged his shirt free.

The crowd had shifted. He could feel it in the low, uneasy noise spreading through the stands. United supporters adored him, but their adoration came with expectations. They knew what he looked like when he was about to take over a match.

They also knew what he looked like when something had crawled beneath his skin.

Tonight, he was visibly unraveling.

The ball went out of play near the west stand. While Storm’s End prepared for the throw-in, Valarr turned toward Section 112 again.

Empty.

He rubbed his wrist.

A memory pressed at the edge of his thoughts—rainwater dripping from a corrugated academy roof, cold hands fumbling with thread, your mouth pinched in concentration—but he pushed it away before it could fully form.

Not now.

//

The first half ended scoreless.

Valarr walked into the tunnel without looking toward the stands again. The dressing room door had barely shut before the manager began shouting.

“You’re dropping too deep, forcing the pass, and pressing without the rest of the line.”

Valarr sat at his place and began loosening his boot. “I know.”

“You know?”

“I said I know.”

The room went quiet.

His manager, Harrold Westerling, had coached football longer than Valarr had been alive. He was one of the few people in the club who did not care about Valarr’s salary, family name, endorsements, or market value.

He stepped closer. “Then fix it.”

Valarr pulled off the boot and dropped it to the floor.

Westerling continued through the tactical adjustments. Storm’s End’s right-back was carrying an injury. Their central midfielder had begun sitting too deep. United needed faster switches of play and more patience around the box.

Valarr listened this time.

Mostly.

His phone was locked in the equipment cabinet with the others. He could not check whether you had messaged him.

You might be ill.

There might have been trouble at work.

Your train could have stopped.

You might have decided not to come.

That possibility bothered him most.

Not because you owed him attendance. He knew you did not. He had told you so repeatedly, especially after you accused him of behaving as if the fixture list should determine your entire calendar.

But this was the quarterfinal.

You knew what it meant.

You knew how badly he wanted the Westeros Cup. You knew he had watched the tournament as a child from the hallway outside his father’s study because football had not been allowed during family dinners. You knew he had kept a torn photograph of the trophy inside his academy locker.

You had never missed a Westeros knockout match.

Until tonight.

Jace dropped onto the bench beside him. “You’re being weird.”

Valarr took the fresh shirt offered by the kit assistant. “I’m fine.”

“You nearly got booked arguing over a shoulder challenge.”

“It was a foul.”

“It was barely contact.”

Valarr pulled the shirt over his head.

Jace lowered his voice. “Did you two fight?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Valarr gave him a flat look.

Jace held up his hands. “Fine. None of my business.”

“It isn’t.”

“Though if she doesn’t show up, perhaps tell your face.”

Valarr looked away before he could say something that would turn into a dressing-room story repeated for months.

The second half began with United playing toward the south stand.

Valarr forced himself back into the match.

He stayed higher. He stopped chasing the ball into midfield. He played one-touch passes and waited for the spaces Westerling had promised would open.

United improved.

Still, something in him remained wound too tightly.

In the fifty-third minute, Garlan won the ball near the center circle and drove forward. Valarr moved between the center-backs. The pass came early, bending behind the defensive line.

He reached it.

One touch to settle.

Another to shift onto his right foot.

The goalkeeper rushed.

Valarr struck low toward the far corner.

The shot went inches wide.

The stadium groaned.

He stood inside the box, hands on his hips, and tipped his head back.

Then, before turning toward midfield, he looked toward Section 112.

Someone was moving along Row F.

You.

You were half bent as you apologized your way past the seated supporters, coat unbuttoned, hair windblown, one hand clutching your bag against your body. A steward leaned down to point toward your seat. You nodded, breathless, and continued shuffling sideways.

Valarr stopped walking.

The noise of the stadium seemed to recede for one impossible second.

You reached Seat 18 and sat. Then, as if you could feel him looking, you lifted your head. Your eyes found him. They always did.

You raised one hand in apology.

Valarr stared.

Your face was flushed from running. A strand of hair had caught against your mouth. You brushed it away and mouthed something he could not hear from the pitch.

Sorry.

His lungs unlocked.

Jace passed him on the way back toward the halfway line.

“There she is.”

Valarr shoved his shoulder.

Not hard.

Jace laughed.

The game restarted.

Everything sharpened.

The space between defenders. The movement of Garlan’s hips before he passed. The moment Storm’s End’s midfielder turned his head and lost sight of the runner behind him.

Valarr’s shoulders lowered. His breathing steadied.

In the fifty-eighth minute, he received the ball with his back to goal, rolled away from one defender, and drew a foul.

In the sixty-first, he flicked a pass through two players and sent Jace into the box.

In the sixty-fourth, he nearly scored from the resulting corner.

United pressed higher.

Storm’s End began retreating.

The goal came in the sixty-ninth minute.

Garlan took possession on the left and drove inward. Valarr started toward the near post, dragging the center-back with him, then stopped abruptly and cut behind.

Garlan saw him.

The pass arrived between three defenders.

Valarr met it first time.

The sound of his boot striking the ball was clean and hard, almost lost beneath the roar that followed.

The shot rose beyond the goalkeeper’s hand and hit the underside of the crossbar before crossing the line.

For half a heartbeat, the entire stadium inhaled.

Then it detonated.

Valarr wheeled away from goal.

Garlan ran toward him with both arms spread. Jace was shouting. The supporters behind the net surged against the barriers, scarves and fists lifted into the night.

Valarr ignored all of them.

He turned toward Section 112.

He found you among thousands. Your hands were pressed over your mouth. His teammates were nearly on him when he raised his left hand.

He tapped two fingers against his heart.

Once.

Then pointed directly at you.

The stadium screamed louder.

You lowered your eyes.

You always did.

Around you, supporters grabbed one another, yelling about the famous celebration, the mystery person, the ritual Valarr Targaryen had performed after important goals since his first senior season.

The commentators would be discussing it again.

They would slow the footage down.

They would trace the angle of his arm and speculate about where he had pointed.

They would ask whether it was for his mother, his late grandfather, a private sponsor, an old coach, a superstition, a secret lover.

You knew the truth.

Valarr had told it to you once in the rain, when he was sixteen and furious with the world.

The first one is always yours.

But the memory did not arrive fully.

Not yet.

His teammates crashed into him.

Garlan hooked an arm around his neck. Jace struck the back of his head with an open palm.

“Now can you play football?”

Valarr shoved him off, laughing despite himself.

As they jogged back to the center circle, he glanced at you again.

You were still watching him.

This time, you did not look away.

//

United won two-nil.

Valarr scored the first and assisted the second, a low cutback Jace tapped in from six yards. By the final whistle, the bad first half had become little more than a talking point for the post-match analysts.

The cameras followed Valarr off the pitch. A presenter intercepted him near the tunnel.

“Valarr, difficult opening forty-five minutes, but a very different performance after the break. What changed?”

He glanced toward the stand. You were no longer in your seat.

“Adjusted our shape,” he answered.

The presenter smiled. “Your manager’s instructions?”

“Among other things.”

“And that celebration again. The supporters are desperate to know who you’re pointing to.”

Valarr accepted the player-of-the-match award from an assistant.

“They’ve been desperate for years.”

“Will you finally tell us?”

“No.”

He said it with enough charm that the presenter laughed rather than pushed.

“Someone special?”

Valarr’s grip tightened briefly around the small glass trophy.

“Yes.”

The word left before he could reconsider it.

The presenter’s eyebrows rose.

Behind the camera, a producer made an excited gesture.

Valarr corrected too late.

“A supporter.”

“One particular supporter?”

“The interview’s about the match, isn’t it?”

He smiled then—the polished one, easy and bright, the expression used in advertisements and press conferences when he wanted to reveal nothing.

You would recognize it immediately.

The presenter moved on to the quarterfinal draw. Valarr answered without listening to himself. When the interview ended, he walked down the tunnel, passed the mixed zone, and ignored three reporters calling his name.

His phone waited in his locker. The moment he unlocked it, he saw six messages from you.

I’m sorry.

The train stopped outside Blackwater.

I know you’re going to be unbearable about this.

You looked furious.

Good goal.

Then, sent three minutes later:

Very good goal.

Valarr sat down on the bench.

He typed:

Where are you?

The reply came immediately.

Hospitality corridor. They won’t let me downstairs because apparently my pass is wrong.

His head lifted.

He stood so quickly that the player beside him had to pull his legs out of the way.

“Where are you going?” Jace asked.

Valarr grabbed a sweatshirt.

“To sort something.”

Jace looked at the phone in his hand and made an exaggerated kissing sound.

Two other players joined in.

Valarr did not bother responding.

He left before they could see him smile.

//

You were arguing politely with a security guard when Valarr found you.

You had buttoned your coat now, though one side was fastened incorrectly. Your hair was still disordered from the wind. There were damp marks along the hem of your trousers, and one of your shoelaces had come undone.

“You’re not listening,” you were saying. “I’ve had this pass for months.”

“It’s showing as restricted access.”

“It has never shown as restricted access before.”

“I can’t override the system.”

“You don’t need to override it. You need to look at the name.”

“Names don’t determine access.”

“This one might.”

The guard saw Valarr first.

His entire posture changed.

“Mr. Targaryen.”

You turned.

For several seconds, neither of you spoke.

Valarr had showered quickly. His hair was damp, the ends curling slightly at his neck. He wore black training trousers and a club sweatshirt, the hood flattened against his back. The white tape remained around his wrist.

There was a red mark along his jaw where another player’s shoulder had caught him.

Your eyes went to it before his face.

He noticed. He always noticed.

“You’re late,” he said.

You looked at him.

“Hello to you too.”

“You missed the first half.”

“I noticed.”

“You could have called.”

“I was underground.”

“You could have called before.”

“I did not know the train planned to stop for forty minutes.”

His gaze moved over you again, quick and searching, as though confirming you had arrived intact.

“Why is your coat buttoned like that?”

You looked down.

“It isn’t.”

“It is.”

He stepped closer and began undoing the buttons.

The security guard looked away.

You caught Valarr’s wrist.

“I can dress myself.”

“Evidence suggests otherwise.”

“You have just played ninety minutes of football. Surely you have something else to do.”

“No.”

“You have interviews.”

“Finished.”

“Recovery.”

“Later.”

“A team meeting.”

“Tomorrow.”

“You always have something.”

Valarr corrected the alignment of your coat and fastened the buttons properly. His fingers moved with the ease of someone who had touched your clothing a thousand times. He brushed a piece of lint from your collar and then, with the same absent familiarity, tucked the loose strand of hair behind your ear.

The gesture lasted half a second too long.

Your hand fell from his wrist.

His eyes met yours.

The corridor seemed suddenly narrow.

Valarr stepped back first.

“Your pass,” he said to the guard.

The man handed it over immediately. Valarr examined the card. The access strip had expired two days earlier.

He frowned. “I told them to renew this for the season.”

“I can issue a temporary pass,” the guard said.

“It should be permanent.”

You reached for it. “It doesn’t matter.”

Valarr moved the pass out of reach. “It does.”

“Not everything needs to become an international incident.”

“You were standing in a corridor arguing with security.”

“I was handling it.”

“You call that handling it?”

“I had almost worn him down.”

The guard coughed into his fist.

Valarr finally gave you the pass, though his expression promised someone in administration would receive an unpleasant call before morning.

“Come on.”

“Where?”

“Inside.”

“I should go home.”

“No.”

You stared at him.

“No?”

“You owe me dinner.”

“For what?”

“Arriving after halftime.”

“I crossed half the city to get here.”

“You missed my worst half of the season.”

“Perhaps I was protecting my peace.”

His mouth twitched. Then his gaze sharpened again. “Why didn’t you tell me the train had stopped?”

“You were playing.”

“I wasn’t playing before kickoff.”

“You were preparing.”

“You still could have told me.”

The frustration in his voice was disproportionate enough that you glanced toward the guard.

Valarr saw the glance and lowered his tone.

“I thought something happened.”

Something shifted inside you. “You thought something happened?”

“You weren’t there.”

“That is not usually considered an emergency.”

“For you, perhaps.”

The words settled between you.

Valarr looked away.

From farther down the corridor came the sound of approaching staff members and rolling equipment cases. The private stillness broke.

You bent to retie your shoelace.

Valarr moved before you could.

He crouched in front of you, one knee against the concrete floor, and caught the loose laces between his fingers.

You froze. “Valarr.”

“You’ll trip.”

“I am capable of tying my shoe.”

“You said that about the coat.”

Several club employees passed.

One smiled.

Another looked at you, then at Valarr kneeling at your feet, and quickly hid her expression.

Heat climbed your neck.

Valarr double-knotted the lace.

He had done the same thing when you were nine after you had fallen running behind him through the gardens. He had complained the entire time about your inability to keep up, then slowed his pace for the rest of the afternoon.

The memory arrived so briefly that you almost missed it.

Mud on his knees.

Grass stains on your palms.

A football disappearing over the estate wall.

His voice shouting your name from the other side.

Valarr stood.

“You’re staring.”

“I’m remembering how insufferable you were as a child.”

“Were?”

“You’ve grown worse.”

His hand settled at the small of your back as another equipment case rolled past. He guided you toward the dressing-room corridor without thinking.

You let him.

That was the problem.

You had been letting him for years.

//

The players’ dining room had mostly emptied by the time Valarr brought you inside.

A nutritionist had left covered plates under heat lamps. Recovery drinks stood in neat rows along the counter. Two televisions replayed match highlights without sound.

You sat at a table near the windows while Valarr disappeared into the kitchen area.

“You are not supposed to serve yourself,” you called.

“I work here.”

“That is not how professional kitchens operate.”

He returned carrying two plates.

One held grilled chicken, rice, vegetables, and the exact sauce he always claimed tasted like medicinal herbs.

The other held pasta.

He placed the pasta in front of you.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You texted me at noon complaining that a meeting ran through lunch.”

You looked up. “You remembered that?”

Valarr pulled out the chair beside yours rather than the one across from you.

“I remember things.”

“Only when they concern you.”

“That meeting didn’t concern me.”

“You complained through the entire voice note that I might miss kickoff.”

“That concerned me.” You tried not to smile.

He took your fork, twisted pasta around it, and held it toward you.

You stared at him. “Absolutely not.”

“Eat.”

“I am not five.”

“You’re behaving like it.”

“So are you.”

Valarr ate the forkful himself.

You reached for the utensil.

He moved it away.

“Say the goal was good.”

“I already did.”

“You said good. Then very good.”

“That is generous praise.”

“It went off the crossbar.”

“Almost missed.”

His eyes narrowed.

You took the fork from his hand while he was distracted.

“The second-half movement was better,” you said.

Valarr leaned back.

“Better.”

“You kept dropping too deep in the first half.”

He was silent.

You looked at him.

“What?”

“That’s what Westerling said.”

“Westerling is very intelligent.”

“You think you’re funny.”

“I think you were trying to force the match.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Valarr stabbed at his rice.

You watched him for a moment.

“Were you angry because I was late?”

“No.”

“Valarr.”

“I wasn’t angry.”

“You argued with the referee for two minutes.”

“He was incompetent.”

“You ignored three overlaps.”

“The timing was wrong.”

“You shot when Garlan was open.”

“He would have missed.”

On the screen, the broadcast replayed his goal. The camera followed him as he turned away from his teammates and pointed toward the crowd.

Your eyes moved to the television.

Valarr’s did not.

He was watching you.

“You still do it,” you said quietly.

“What?”

“You know what.” He looked toward the screen at last.

The replay changed to a close view of his face after the goal, fierce and bright with adrenaline.

He reached under the table and rested his hand on your knee. It might have been accidental if he had not done it so often.

At restaurants when photographers appeared.

In cars when traffic became unbearable.

During family dinners when his father began discussing the business.

Under hospital lights while waiting for scans.

His palm was warm through the fabric of your trousers. His thumb moved once, an absent stroke near the inside of your knee.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked.

You swallowed.

Because you date women whose photographs appear beside yours in magazines.

Because the commentators call it a mystery and you let them.

Because each time you point at me, I remember being sixteen and cold and stupidly in love with you.

Because I do not know how much longer I can pretend it means less than it does.

Instead, you said, “People are beginning to think you’re in a cult.”

“That would improve my reputation.”

“You are already worshipped by half the country.”

“The wrong half.”

His hand remained on your knee.

The door opened behind you.

Jace entered with Garlan and two members of the coaching staff. He spotted the two of you and smiled slowly.

“There they are.”

Valarr did not remove his hand.

You did.

You reached for your glass as casually as possible.

Jace came to the table.

“Nice of you to arrive.”

“I was delayed.”

“You should have seen him.”

Valarr looked up. “Velaryon.”

“What? She deserves to know.”

“Know what?”

Jace pulled out the chair across from you. “He spent the entire first half playing like someone had stolen his dog.”

“I did not.”

“He nearly fought the referee.”

“The referee deserved it.”

“He asked the assistant manager during warmup whether the hospitality entrances had changed.”

Your gaze moved to Valarr.

Valarr stared at Jace with open threat.

Jace continued cheerfully. “Then you arrived, and suddenly he remembered he’s the best player in Westeros.”

“I was adjusting to the match.”

“Of course.”

Garlan sat beside Jace.

“To be fair, we all noticed.”

Valarr pushed back from the table.

“Do either of you have somewhere else to be?”

“No,” Jace said. “Team bus leaves in twenty minutes.”

“I’m not taking the bus.”

“You never do when she’s here.”

A small silence followed.

Not awkward. Worse.

Knowing.

You gathered your coat from the back of the chair.

“I should leave.”

Valarr stood immediately.

“I’ll drive you.”

“You have recovery.”

“I’ll do it at home.”

“You should go with the team.”

“I don’t need to.”

“You do.”

His expression changed.

You knew every version of his face.

The public smile.

The arrogant tilt of his mouth after scoring.

The cold stillness he used with executives.

The fury that tightened his jaw after a defeat.

This was something quieter.

The look he gave you whenever you placed distance where he had not expected it.

“You’re leaving?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s late.”

“You always stay after Westeros matches.”

“I have work in the morning.”

“You had work this morning.”

“That is generally how employment functions.”

“I’ll stay at yours.”

The words came easily, without hesitation or request.

Jace looked down at the table. Garlan became very interested in his recovery drink.

You tightened your hold on the coat. “You have your own apartment.”

“It’s forty minutes from here.”

“Mine is thirty-five.”

“Exactly.”

“That is not an argument.”

“I sleep better at yours.”

No one spoke.

Valarr seemed unaware of what he had admitted.

Or perhaps only unaware of how it sounded.

You looked at him.

He looked back, impatience beginning to edge his expression, as if the conclusion were obvious and you were deliberately refusing to see it.

You knew what would happen if you agreed.

He would follow you home.

He would drop his training bag beside the door, though you had asked him a hundred times not to block the entrance. He would shower in your bathroom and leave a towel on the floor. He would wear the old grey shirt he kept in your wardrobe and complain there was nothing to eat while opening cupboards he knew as well as you did.

He would lie across your sofa with his head in your lap.

He would fall asleep while you answered emails.

At some point in the night, he would reach for you without waking.

You would remain still, because moving away always felt crueler than letting him hold you.

In the morning, he would steal your coffee and kiss your temple as though it meant nothing.

Then he would leave for training.

And you would spend the rest of the day trying to remember that friendship was enough.

“I have an early meeting,” you said.

“I’ll be quiet.”

“You’re never quiet.”

“I can be.”

“You talk in your sleep after matches.”

“I do not.”

“You were giving tactical instructions to my sofa cushions last time.”

Jace covered a laugh with a cough.

Valarr ignored him.

“I won’t bother you.”

That was not possible.

He had been bothering you since childhood.

First by kicking footballs over a garden wall.

Then by waiting on the other side until you returned them.

Then by becoming the one person in your life you had never learned how to refuse.

You exhaled.

“One night.”

His shoulders loosened.

The change was small enough that no one who did not know him would have seen it.

Everyone at the table saw it. Jace looked at Garlan. Garlan looked at the ceiling.

Valarr took your coat from your hands and held it open for you. You slid your arms into the sleeves. His fingers settled briefly at the back of your neck, brushing beneath your hair as he adjusted the collar.

“Good,” he said.

Like he had won something.

Perhaps he had.

//

He fell asleep in the car.

Valarr’s driver took the river road while rain streaked the windows and the city moved around you in blurred reflections. Valarr sat beside you in the back seat, knees spread because he had never learned how to occupy a reasonable amount of space.

For the first ten minutes, he answered messages from his agent.

Then the phone slipped lower in his hand.

His head tipped toward the window.

You watched him fight sleep with the same stubbornness he brought to everything else.

“You can close your eyes,” you said.

“I’m awake.”

“You are not.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Oh right, and your thinking has begun to snore.”

His eyes opened.

“I don’t snore.”

“You do after night matches.”

He looked offended.

Then he shifted closer.

His head came down on your shoulder.

The movement was so practiced that neither of you acknowledged it.

His hair was still slightly damp. You could smell his shampoo beneath the clean, sharp scent of the club soap. His body remained warm from exertion, even through the sweatshirt.

You stared out the window.

Valarr’s hand rested on the seat between you. His fingers flexed once. Then found yours. He did not lace them together. He simply curled his hand around two of your fingers, as though checking that you were there.

Within minutes, his breathing deepened.

The city passed.

You looked down.

The tape at his wrist had loosened near the edge. Beneath it, a faded thread showed against his skin.

You touched it lightly.

Rain struck the windows.

For one moment, it was not rain against glass but rain against the roof of an academy shelter years earlier.

Valarr at sixteen, soaked through and pretending he was not afraid.

You sitting beside him with red and black thread wrapped around your fingers.

His trial the next morning.

His family refusing to attend.

His knee bouncing restlessly beneath the bench.

You tying the bracelet around his wrist.

He had looked down at it with disdain.

“What is this?”

“Protection.”

“It’s thread.”

“Very observant.”

“It looks childish.”

“So do you when you sulk.”

“I’m not wearing this.”

“You are.”

“Why?”

“Because I made it.”

“That is not a reason.”

“It is the only reason you’re getting.”

He had complained until the knot was secure. Then he had held his wrist beneath the weak academy light and turned it once, studying the colors.

The next morning, you saw it beneath his sleeve before he stepped onto the pitch. He never removed it again.

Valarr shifted in his sleep. His fingers tightened around yours.

The memory dissolved.

You looked at his face, softened by exhaustion.

The red mark on his jaw would bruise by morning. There was tension between his brows even in sleep. He had played ninety minutes, scored, faced cameras, answered questions, and stood beneath the weight of thousands of expectations.

Now he slept against you like the boy who used to climb through your bedroom window after fights with his father.

The driver turned onto your street.

You should have woken him. You did not.

For another minute, you let yourself remain still beneath the familiar weight of him.

Then Valarr murmured your name in his sleep.

Not loudly.

Not clearly.

But with the certainty of someone reaching for the one thing he expected to find.

Your chest tightened.

You turned your face toward the dark window before he could wake and see it.

Outside, the city continued moving.

Inside the car, his hand remained wrapped around yours.

And beneath the loosening tape at his wrist, the old thread bracelet held.

//

In celebration of the world cup final, I wrote this little piece. I might extend expand it into a series but we'll see. I hope you enjoy!

[lalalovelyly]

The Shores Of Broken Things

Jacaerys Velaryon x Reader

Summary: After the Battle of the Gullet, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon should be dead, instead, he washes ashore on a mysterious island, where a lonely woman nurses him back to health. As the days pass, Jace finds himself falling in love with his beautiful savior.

CW: The relationship contains themes of coercion, emotional dependency, and captivity. SMUT

Genre: Dark Fantasy

AN: First Jace fic! Different from what i usually write, comments are appreciated!

WC: 26K

He should be dead.

The last thing he remembered with any coherence was the sky, a sky choked with smoke and screaming. Beneath that memory lay only fractured images that swam behind his closed eyelids, fragments of chaos that refused to assemble into anything whole.

Vermax.

The name pierced through the darkness like a blade. His dragon. His beautiful, loyal Vermax, who had hatched from an egg placed in his cradle when he was nothing more than a squalling babe with a tuft of dark hair that already marked him as different from his silver-haired mother. Vermax had shrieked as the grappling hooks tore into his wings, as the Triarchy ships surrounded them, as the sea rose up to swallow them both.

Jace’s chest seized, he remembered the impact. He remembered the bone-shattering crash as Vermax slammed into the churning waters of the Gullet, and he remembered the dragon’s terrified, agonized roar. That sound had carried more than pain. It had carried something that felt like betrayal, as if Vermax could not understand why the sky had abandoned them. The cold of the sea had been absolute, salt water flooding his mouth, his throat, his lungs.

He had surfaced somehow. He had gasped and choked and reached for something, a piece of wreckage or a shattered mast, though the memory refused to sharpen. The waves had tossed him like a child’s toy. Through the spray and the smoke, the first bolt had taken him in the shoulder. The second had buried itself in his side, just beneath the ribs. The third was a blank space in his memory, a sensation his mind had simply refused to record.

What remained was the feeling that followed. A slow, spreading numbness. The way his limbs had stopped obeying him. The way the sky had tilted and spun, grey and gold and red bleeding together like watercolors on parchment. His last conscious thought had not been of his mother, nor of his brothers, nor of duty or the Iron Throne or the war that was tearing the realm apart. It had been of Vermax.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

—

He woke to the glow of candlelight, the light came from dozens of candles, the air smelled of salt and something else, something green and living. Herbs, perhaps, or flowers. It was an earthy smell, a growing smell, utterly unlike the smoke and blood and terror that had filled his nostrils before the darkness took him.

Jace tried to move, and his body screamed in protest. Every muscle, every joint, every inch of skin felt like an open wound packed with burning coals. Pain lanced through his shoulder, his side, his ribs. He sucked in a sharp breath through clenched teeth, and even that small motion sent fire racing down his spine.

“You shouldn’t move.”

The voice was soft and female, carrying an accent he had never heard before. The vowels were rounder than he was used to, the cadence lilting and unfamiliar, Jace turned his head slowly, every vertebra in his neck protesting, and saw you.

You were kneeling beside the bed, on a cushion of deep blue silk, and you were looking at him with an expression of such open relief that Jace forgot, for a moment, how to breathe.

You were beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the powdered faces and elaborate hairstyles of court ladies. You wore no jewelry, no rings, no gems at your throat. Your dress, if it could even be called that, was unlike anything he had ever seen, layers of fabric in pale ivory and soft gold that had been draped rather than tailored. The cut left your arms bare, and the neckline was wide and flowing. It was clothing from a warmer world entirely, bearing no resemblance to the heavy velvets and structured bodices of Westeros.

“You’re awake,” you said, and your smile was like dawn breaking over still water. “I was beginning to fear you wouldn’t open your eyes again.”

Jace opened his mouth to speak, all that came out was a dry, rasping croak. His throat felt as though it had been scoured raw.

You reached for a clay cup beside you, glazed deep blue, and lifted it to his lips with a careful hand. “Drink. Slowly. You’ve been without water for a long time.”

The water was cool and impossibly clean. It slid down his throat like mercy. He drank until you pulled the cup gently away, your expression soft but firm.

“I said slowly. Your body has been through a great ordeal.” Jace sagged back against the furs, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Even drinking had exhausted him. He could feel the heat radiating from his own skin, a fever burning beneath the surface. “Where…” His voice was barely a whisper, cracked and ruined. “Where am I?”

You set the cup aside. “My home. I found you on the shore.”

He tried to form another question, but his thoughts were slipping away from him like water through fingers. The shore. The battle. The arrows.

“Your body was full of arrows,” you said quietly, as if you had followed the path of his scattered thoughts. “You looked dead. I do not know how you survived.” A pause. “But I am glad you did.”

Jace stared at you, his vision blurring and sharpening in turns. The candles made halos around your silhouette. The cave walls curved around you both like cupped hands. He lay in a bed of soft furs with clean linen bandages wrapped around his chest and shoulder. The space around him was strange, a blend of cave stone and polished wood and silk cushions.

He tried to focus on you again, on your strange dress and your unfamiliar accent and the way you looked at him without the calculating gaze of a courtier. Your expression held only simple, unguarded relief.

“You…” he started, but the words crumbled before he could shape them. He was so tired. The heat in his blood was growing worse, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool air of the cave.

“Shh.” You leaned closer and pressed a cool cloth to his brow. Your touch was impossibly gentle. “You have a fever. The arrows were laced with something, I think. A poison, or something like it. It will take time to burn it out.”

Jace’s eyes fluttered. The cool cloth was a mercy, and your hand was steady against his skin.

“Where is this island?” he managed, the question barely a whisper. “How far from the battle…”

You shook your head, a small and quiet movement. “This is my island. That is all that matters now. You are here, and you are safe.” Your hand brushed the dark, sweat-soaked curls back from his forehead. “You are my guest. I will take care of you.”

He should have questioned you. He should have demanded to know where he was, who you were, how any of this was possible. He was a prince, raised on suspicion, trained to trust no one. But the fever was burning through him, and you were so calm, so steady, and your hands were so gentle, and he was so gods-damned tired.

“Rest,” you murmured. “You are not strong enough to stay awake. But you will be. In time.”

Jace’s eyes closed against his will. The darkness pulled at him, soft and warm. The last thing he felt was the cool cloth on his forehead and the gentle weight of your hand smoothing his hair back from his face.

“Sleep, Jace,” you whispered.

—

The days blurred together like watercolors left in the rain, Jace measured time by the changing quality of light that filtered through the cave's entrance, a distant glow that brightened and dimmed in a rhythm he slowly came to recognize. Morning, afternoon, evening, night. The cycle repeated itself over and over. He could not see the sky from his bed, only the rough stone ceiling and the flickering candles and, whenever he turned his head, the soft silhouette of you moving through the chamber.

You were always there, that was the first thing he truly understood once the fever broke and his mind began to piece itself back together. You were always there. When he woke gasping from nightmares of Vermax screaming, the arrows striking, the water closing over his head, you were beside him with your cool hand on his forehead and your voice murmuring words he could not quite catch but that soothed him anyway. When the pain in his wounds flared hot and unbearable, you were there with the medicine, spooning bitter liquid past his cracked lips and following it with cool water to wash away the taste. When the fever spiked and he thrashed in the furs, soaked in sweat and half-delirious, you were there with cloths dipped in cold water, pressing them to his chest, his neck, his brow.

He did not know how you slept. He did not know when you ate. He only knew that every time he opened his eyes, you were somewhere nearby, kneeling beside his bed or mixing herbs at the stone table or simply sitting on your silk cushion with your hands folded in your lap, watching the candles burn.

“You don’t have to stay,” he rasped one night, though it might have been day for all he could tell the difference. His voice was still weak and still cracked, but it no longer hurt to speak. “You must have other things to do.”

You looked up from the bowl you were mixing, and your lips curved into that soft, patient smile he was beginning to recognize. “I have nothing more important than keeping you alive, Jace. That is a full-time occupation, it seems.”

He wanted to argue, but exhaustion pulled him back under before he could form the words, the fever broke on what might have been the fifth day, or the sixth, or the seventh. He had lost count.

He woke drenched in sweat, his hair plastered to his forehead and the furs kicked to the foot of the bed, but his head was clear. For the first time since he had opened his eyes in this cave, his thoughts were not swimming in a haze of heat and pain. He could feel the wounds in his shoulder and side, still tender and still healing, but they no longer burned with the sharp, insistent fire of infection.

He was alive. He was going to stay alive, and that meant he had to get back.

His mother. His brothers. The war. Every day he spent lying in this bed was another day the Blacks fought without him, another day his family believed him dead, another day the Greens advanced their stolen throne. He had to get stronger. He had to return to Westeros.

“Your thoughts are very loud.” Jace turned his head. You were sitting on your cushion beside the bed, a piece of fabric in your hands and a needle moving in small, precise stitches. He had no idea how long you had been there. He had not even noticed you.

“My thoughts?” he repeated, his voice hoarse but steadier than before.

“You are frowning at the ceiling as though it has offended you.” You did not look up from your sewing, but there was a hint of amusement in your voice. “I assume you are planning your escape.”

Jace blinked. “I was not planning an escape. I was only thinking about how to leave.”

“That is the same thing.”

“It is absolutely not the same thing.” Now you did look up, one eyebrow raised, and Jace felt his face warm. He had walked directly into that.

“You want to go back,” you said, and your voice was quieter now, the teasing edge softened into something more serious. “It is natural. You have people waiting for you. A family. A war, perhaps, judging by the state of you when I found you.” You returned your attention to your stitching. “I understand.”

He was quiet for a moment, watching your hands move. The fabric you were working on was pale blue, the stitches neat and even. You were making him more bandages, he realized.

“Yes,” he admitted finally. “I have to go back. My family needs me. They probably think I am dead.”

“Then we will work to make you strong enough to leave.” You bit off the thread with your teeth, smooth and practiced. “But you cannot rush it. The wounds are healing well, but if you push too hard, too fast, you will undo all my hard work. And I have worked very hard, Jace.”

There was something almost stern in your tone, and despite himself, he felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward. “I would not dream of undoing your hard work.”

“Good.” You set the sewing aside and rose to your feet, your gossamer skirts rustling softly against the stone floor. “You have been lying in that bed for days. I think it is time you tried to sit up properly. Do you think you can manage it?”

Jace took a breath. His shoulder throbbed. His side ached. But the fever was gone, and his head was clear, and he was so gods-damned tired of lying flat on his back.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I can.” It was harder than he had expected.

His muscles had atrophied during the days of fever and stillness. His arms shook when he pushed himself up, and the wound in his side pulled sharply, and by the time he was sitting upright against the carved headboard, he was breathing hard and sweating again. But he was sitting. He was upright. He was looking at the cave from a new angle, and it was strange and wonderful and disorienting all at once.

“There,” you said, and you were smiling now, truly smiling, something brighter than the gentle curve of lips he had grown used to. “That was not so terrible, was it?”

“Terrible,” Jace managed, still catching his breath. “Absolutely terrible.”

“But you did it.”

He looked at you, at the way the candlelight caught the strange color of your eyes, and he found himself almost smiling back. “I did it.”

—

The days that followed fell into a pattern, you would help him sit up in the mornings, propping him against the headboard with pillows and furs. You would change his bandages, your fingers quick and efficient, your touch never lingering longer than necessary but never cold or impersonal either. You would bring him food, strange fruits he had never tasted before, sweet and tangy, and a porridge made from some grain he did not recognize, and fresh water that tasted cleaner than anything he had ever drunk in his life.

And you would talk about small things, the weather on the island, the herbs you used in your medicines, the fish you caught in the tidal pools below the cliffs. You had a dry, quiet sense of humor that surprised him, and a way of tilting your head when you were thinking that he found himself watching for.

In return, he told you things about himself. He was still a prince, still trained in caution, and so he held back the details that mattered most. But he told you about Dragonstone, about the volcanic rock and the sea winds and the dragons that wheeled in the sky. He told you about his brothers, careful to speak of them in the present tense even though Luke was-even though Luke had become something he could not yet say aloud.

He told you other things instead. That he missed the sea. That he had never been good at dancing. That his mother had taught him to read when he was four years old, and he had been so proud that he had carried the book around for a week straight, showing it to anyone who would look.

You laughed at that, a real laugh, bright and surprised, as if you had not expected him to say something so ordinary. “A week?”

“I was very proud of myself.”

“I can imagine. A little prince with his book, demanding that everyone admire his genius.”

“I did not demand. I simply made strong suggestions.”

“That is the same thing.”

“It is absolutely not the same thing, and I will not have my diplomatic skills insulted.”

You laughed again, and Jace realized with a jolt of surprise that he liked making you laugh. It was a good sound, your laugh, unstudied and unguarded, the sound of someone who spent too much time alone and had forgotten to be self-conscious about joy.

You were his only companion. His caretaker. His only visitor.

He had not seen another person even once in all the days he had been lying in this bed. No one came to the cave. No one called your name from outside. No one brought supplies or messages or news. It was only you, always you, appearing and disappearing through the winding passages of the cave system with the quiet confidence of someone who knew every stone by heart.

He had not asked about other people. It felt rude, somehow, when you were taking care of him and feeding him and changing his bandages and sitting beside him through the long, fevered nights. To ask about the absence of others would have sounded like an accusation, as though your company were insufficient, as though he had grown bored of you.

So he did not ask, but the question sat in the back of his mind, growing heavier with each passing day.

—

The day he walked for the first time was the day everything began to shift.

It was morning, the pale silver light filtering through the distant cave entrance, and you had just finished changing his bandages. The wounds were healing well, the flesh knitting together into angry red scars that would fade to white in time. You told him he would have a collection of them, a constellation across his shoulder and ribs. He said he would wear them with pride. You called him ridiculous.

“Today,” you announced, rising to your feet and brushing off your skirts, “you are going to walk.”

Jace looked up at you. “Walk.”

“Yes. Walk. Put one foot in front of the other. I assume you knew how to do it before you arrived here.”

“I knew how to walk.”

“Then today you will remember.”

It was harder than sitting up. It was harder than anything he had done since waking in this cave. His legs felt as though they belonged to someone else, weak and unsteady, the muscles wasted from days of lying still. You had to help him, your arm around his back and his arm across your shoulders, bearing some of his weight even though he tried very hard not to let you. You were smaller than him and slighter, and he was terrified of crushing you.

“You will not crush me,” you said, as if reading his thoughts. “I am stronger than I look. Stop trying to hold yourself up with pride alone and lean on me.”

He leaned on you, by the time he had taken five steps across the chamber, his legs were shaking and sweat was dripping down his face. But he had walked. Five steps. Then ten. Then, a few days later, he crossed the entire chamber without help, his hand braced against the wall and his breath coming hard and fast.

And the day after that, you smiled at him and said, “I think it is time you saw the sun.”

The cave system was a maze, Jace knew, that your home was larger than the single chamber where he had been lying. He had seen you disappear down passages and emerge from different directions, had caught glimpses of other rooms, a kitchen carved into the rock, a storage chamber lined with jars and barrels, a space where water trickled down the wall into a natural basin. But he had not grasped the full scale of it until you led him through it yourself.

The passages twisted and turned, branching off into side tunnels and dead ends. Some were narrow, barely wide enough for a single person to squeeze through. Others opened into wide chambers with high ceilings, lit by candles placed in alcoves and by thin shafts of daylight that pierced down through cracks in the rock. The walls were rough in some places and smooth in others, worn down by time and water and the patient labor of whoever had carved this place.

“Did you build all this?” Jace asked, his voice echoing strangely in the stone corridors. He was walking slowly, one hand on the wall for balance, but he was walking.

You glanced back at him. “The caves were here long before me. I only furnished them.”

“You furnished them very well,” he muttered, stepping around a carved wooden chest that would not have looked out of place in a merchant’s manse.

“I had time.”

That was all you said, as if it explained everything. As if it explained anything at all.

The light grew brighter as you walked, the grey-silver of filtered daylight giving way to a warm golden glow. Jace could smell the outside now, salt air and flowers and something green and growing. His heart beat faster. He had been underground for so long that he had almost forgotten what the sky looked like.

Then you stepped through the cave entrance, and he followed you, and the world opened up around him.

It was beautiful, there was no other word for it, no word that could possibly capture what Jace saw as he stood at the mouth of the cave, blinking in the sudden brightness, his eyes struggling to adjust after so many days of candlelight and shadow.

The island spread out before him like something from a dream, the cliffs where the cave was carved dropped down to a shoreline of white sand that gleamed in the morning sun. Beyond the beach, the water was the most extraordinary shade of blue he had ever seen, turquoise at the shore, deepening to sapphire further out, clear and calm and glittering with reflected light. The sky was vast and cloudless, a pale, soft blue that seemed to go on forever.

But it was the island itself that stole his breath, flowers grew everywhere, wild, sprawling, abundant blooms that cascaded down the cliffs and carpeted the meadows in explosions of color. He saw flowers in shades he had never encountered before, deep violet, vivid orange, a blue so pale it was almost silver. Trees heavy with fruit he did not recognize bent over natural pathways, their branches laden with something golden and round, something dark and pear-shaped, something that resembled a pomegranate but was the color of honey.

The air was warm and sweet, thick with the scent of blossoms and salt and damp earth. Birds sang somewhere in the distance, strange, melodic calls that were not quite like any birdsong he knew. A waterfall tumbled down the cliff face to his left, a thin silver ribbon that caught the light and threw rainbows into the air.

Jace stood there, swaying slightly on his still-weak legs, and he could not speak.

“I know,” you said quietly, standing beside him. “It is a great deal, after so long underground.”

“I have never seen anything like this.”

“It is home.” Your voice was matter of fact, but there was something softer underneath it, something almost sad. “Come. There is a place to sit not far from here. You should not stand for too long yet.”

He let you lead him to a flat outcropping of rock cushioned with moss and ferns, and he sat down heavily, still staring out at the impossible landscape. The flowers swayed in the breeze. The waterfall sang its endless song. The sea glittered and danced.

And there was no one here, the realization crept up on him slowly, settling over his shoulders like a cold cloak. He looked out at the island, the meadows, the fruit trees, the white sand beach, the cliffs, and he saw no houses and no fishing boats pulled up on the shore. He saw no paths worn by the tread of many feet and no smoke rising from chimneys. He heard no voices calling in the distance. He saw no sign of human life at all.

Only the flowers. The birds. The waterfall. The sea.

And you.

—

He did not say anything at first, you helped him walk a little further each day, down to the edge of the meadow where the strange golden fruit grew on low, sprawling trees, up to a ridge that overlooked the eastern shore where the water was even bluer and the sky even wider. You showed him the tidal pools, teeming with tiny creatures he had never seen, brightly colored shells that moved on dozens of legs, star-shaped animals that clung to the rocks, fish that darted and flashed like living jewels.

And everywhere you went, you were the only person, he saw no footprints but yours, he saw no structures but the cave. The only signs of cultivation were a small vegetable garden tucked into a sheltered hollow behind the cliffs, neat rows of plants he recognized, mostly herbs and some kind of root vegetable, and further back, half-hidden by a grove of flowering trees, a low stone wall enclosing a patch of churned earth.

He heard the pigs before he saw them, a grunting, snuffling chorus rose and fell, punctuated by the occasional indignant squeal. Jace followed the sound, moving carefully along a narrow path between two rock formations, and emerged into a clearing where at least two dozen pigs were milling about in a large stone enclosure. They were fat and healthy, their coats glossy, their ears flopping. Piglets tumbled over each other in the dirt while larger sows dozed in the shade of the trees.

And you were in the middle of them, you were scattering something from a woven basket, scraps of fruit rinds and vegetable peels and some kind of grain, and the pigs crowded around you like old friends. You were speaking to them in a low, affectionate murmur, and your hands moved among them with the ease of long familiarity.

You looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the enclosure. Your expression shifted, just slightly. Something guarded, something wary, flickered behind your eyes before you smoothed it away.

“You found my pigs,” you said, Jace leaned against the stone wall, catching his breath. The walk had been longer than he had realized, and his side was aching. “You have a lot of pigs.”

“They keep me company.” You tossed another handful of scraps into the enclosure, and a particularly large sow shouldered her way forward to claim it. “And they are useful. The meat, the fat, the leather. Nothing goes to waste.”

He watched you for a moment. The pigs jostled around your legs, grunting and snuffling, and you moved among them without the slightest hesitation, like a shepherdess, like someone who had been doing this for years.

“Where are the other people?” he asked.

Your hands stilled on the basket. You did not look up.

“What other people?”

“The villagers. The farmers. Whoever else lives here.” Jace gestured vaguely at the enclosure, at the pigs, at the island beyond. “You said this was your island. But someone has to help you with all of this.”

He trailed off. You were looking at him now, and your expression was strange, as though you had been expecting this question and dreading it in equal measure.

“There are no other people, Jace,” you said quietly.

He stared at you. “What do you mean, there are no other people?”

“I mean it is only me.” You set the basket down on the stone wall. Your hands, now empty, folded together in front of you. “There is no village. There are no farmers. There are no fishermen or shepherds or traders. There is only me, and the pigs, and the birds, and the fish in the sea. That is all.”

The words refused to make sense. Jace shook his head, a short, sharp movement. “That cannot be right. You cannot live here alone. How do you survive? How do you get supplies? There has to be someone else, a trader who comes by ship, a neighboring island, something.”

“There is no one else.” Your voice was calm and steady, but there was something raw underneath it now. “No ships come here. No traders. No neighbors. The island is hidden. It does not appear on any map. No one knows it exists.”

“That is impossible.”

“It is simply true.”

Jace pushed himself off the stone wall, ignoring the protest of his healing wounds. His heart was beating too fast. His thoughts were spinning. “How did you get here, then? How do you live? You cannot simply be alone on an island forever.”

“I did not say I chose it.”

The words stopped him cold, you were still standing in the middle of the pig enclosure, surrounded by grunting, oblivious animals. Your strange dress fluttered in the breeze, the pale fabric catching the sunlight. Your face was composed, but your eyes were dark with something old and heavy and carefully buried.

“My brother sent me here,” you said. “As punishment.”

Jace opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Punishment for what?”

“For disobeying him.” Your voice was flat now, reciting facts rather than feelings. “I did something he could not forgive. And instead of killing me, he sent me here. He had the means to do it, the ships, the men, the knowledge of this place. He left me with supplies and seeds and animals and told me I would never leave.”

“You have been here ever since,” Jace said slowly.

“I have been here ever since.”

“How long?”

You looked away, out over the blue water, and for a moment you were utterly still. “A long time.”

Jace’s mind was racing, scrambling to fit the pieces together. A brother with enough power to exile someone to a hidden island. Ships and men and the means to keep the place secret. A lord powerful enough to make his sister disappear without anyone asking questions.

“Who is your brother?” he asked.

Your jaw tightened. “A lord. That is all you need to know.”

“A lord of what? Where? What house?”

“It does not matter.” Your voice sharpened, just slightly, the first hint of steel he had ever heard from you. “What matters is that he is powerful enough to do this. Powerful enough that if I try to leave, if I find a way off this island and set foot on the mainland, I will be found and I will be brought back, and the consequences will be worse than exile.”

Jace stared at you, you were alone. Completely, utterly alone. You had been alone for what might have been months or years or decades. You had built a life in a cave, furnished it with silk and polished wood, grown a garden and raised pigs and taught yourself to heal. And no one had come for you. No one had visited. No one had even known you were here.

Until a dying dragon prince washed up on your shore.

“I am sorry,” he said, and the words felt pathetically inadequate. “I did not know.”

“How could you have known?” You picked up the basket again, your movements brisk and practical, as if you were eager to change the subject. “You were unconscious when you arrived. It is not as if I introduced myself and gave you a tour. Welcome to my prison, please enjoy the flowers.”

“It is not a prison.” You looked at him, and your smile was tired and sad and strangely kind. “It is a very beautiful prison. But it is a prison nonetheless.” You turned and walked away, the basket tucked under your arm, the pigs trailing after you like a strange, grunting entourage. Jace watched you go, your bare shoulders and your flowing dress and the way you moved through the meadow as if you had memorized every inch of it.

And he understood, suddenly, why you had never hesitated to save him. Why you had sat beside his bed for days on end. Why you had laughed at his stupid jokes and argued with him about the proper way to brew medicinal tea.

You were lonely.

Jace stood at the edge of the pig enclosure, the sun warm on his face and the sea glittering in the distance, and he thought about his mother and his brothers and the war and the throne.

He had to go back. He had to, but as he watched you disappear into the grove of flowering trees, your figure growing smaller and smaller against the impossible beauty of the island, he realized that leaving might be harder than he had thought.

—

In the days following your revelation—it is just me, there is no one else—Jace threw himself into the work of recovery with a ferocity that surprised even him. He woke early, before the light through the cave entrance had shifted from silver to gold, and he pushed his body harder than was probably wise. He walked the island's paths until his legs stopped shaking. He climbed the low cliffs until his arms stopped burning. He ate everything you put in front of him, slept when you told him to sleep, and bit back every complaint when you made him drink your bitter medicines.

"Someone is motivated," you remarked one morning, watching him pace the length of the chamber. He had been doing laps—back and forth, back and forth—testing the strength of his newly healed legs. The scars on his shoulder and side had faded to pink, then to white, and the pain was a distant memory now, only flaring when he moved too quickly or twisted the wrong way.

"I have to get home," he said, not breaking stride. "My mother needs me. My brothers need me. Every day I spend here is another day they think I'm dead."

You nodded, your expression unreadable. "Then we had better build you a boat."

The boat took shape slowly, you showed him a grove of trees on the eastern side of the island, tall and straight, their wood pale and close-grained, ideal for shipbuilding. You had an axe, kept sharp and well-oiled in one of the storage chambers, and you handed it to him without ceremony.

"I will help where I can," you said, "but I am not a shipwright. You will have to figure out most of it yourself."

Jace had never built a boat before. He had sailed on dozens of them but knowing how to sail and knowing how to build were two very different things. He felled the first tree through trial and error, the axe handle blistering his palms, the sweat dripping into his eyes. By the time the trunk crashed to the ground, he was exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure.

"Not bad," you said from where you sat on a nearby rock, a pile of mending in your lap. You had been watching him work for the better part of an hour, offering no advice but plenty of company. "For a prince who has never done a day's labor in his life."

"I've done labor."

"Name one example."

He opened his mouth and swung the axe into the fallen trunk with more force than necessary. "I trained with swords. That's labor."

"Swords are not labor. Swords are play for princes."

"Then what do you call this?" He gestured at the tree, the axe, his blistered hands.

You smiled, that slow, warm smile that was becoming as familiar to him as the sunrise. "I call it a good start."

The days passed, Jace shaped the wood as best he could, stripping branches and hewing planks with tools you provided from the depths of the cave. Some of them were strange—shaped for hands slightly different from his own, their handles worn smooth by use that was not his. He didn't ask where they came from. He was learning that there were questions you would answer and questions you would not, and the line between them was invisible until he crossed it.

But you were always there, always nearby.

He had grown accustomed to the rhythm of your presence, the rustle of your strange, flowing dresses, the soft pad of your bare feet on stone, the quiet humming you did when you worked. You brought him water when the sun grew hot. You checked his scars every evening, your fingers against his skin, pronouncing him healed and healing well. You sat with him while he ate, and you talked about nothing and everything, and your laugh was the brightest sound on an island full of bright sounds.

"I should be further along by now," he said one evening, staring at the skeleton of the boat with frustration. The hull was taking shape, but slowly—too slowly. At this rate, it would be months before it was seaworthy.

"You are one person building a boat by hand," you pointed out. You were sitting cross-legged on a flat rock, sorting through a basket of herbs. The setting sun caught the planes of your face, the curve of your bare shoulders, the way your dress draped across your lap in soft folds. "I think you are allowed to take your time."

"I don't have time." He ran a hand through his hair—longer now, curling past his ears, in desperate need of a trim. "My mother—she needs me. The war—"

He stopped.

The war.

What war?

The thought slipped through his mind like water through fingers, there and gone before he could catch it. There was a war. Of course there was a war. He was fighting in it. Or he had been fighting in it. That was why he had been in the Gullet, why Vermax had—

Vermax.

His chest tightened. He remembered the dragon's scream. He remembered the water closing over his head. He remembered the arrows.

But what was the war about?

"The war," he repeated, more quietly now. "I have to get back to the war."

You looked up from your herbs, and your expression was gentle. Unreadable. "You will. When the boat is ready, you will."

"Right." He nodded, the motion jerky. "Right. The boat."

He picked up the axe and got back to work.

—

One afternoon you were down by the shore, sitting in the shade of a flowering tree while Jace worked on the boat's hull. "Brothers," he said, sanding down a rough edge of wood. "Three of them. Well—two full brothers. Two half-brothers. That's four. No, wait." He frowned. "Joffrey and... and the little ones. Aegon and..."

He stopped, the name wouldn't come.

"Viserys," you said quietly.

"Viserys. Right. Viserys." He shook his head, laughing at himself. "I don't know why I couldn't remember that. He's the youngest. Named after my grandfather."

You said nothing. You only watched him with those shifting sea-glass eyes, and your fingers were very still on the mending in your lap.

"And Luke," Jace continued, the name coming easier now. "Lucerys. He's the second one. He's..."

Dead.

The word surfaced from somewhere deep, cold and sharp as a blade. But it didn't hurt the way it should have. It was distant. Muffled. Like a scream heard through a closed door.

"He's what?" you asked.

Jace blinked. "He's... he's at Dragonstone. With our mother. Waiting for me to come home."

You nodded slowly. "I am sure he misses you."

"He probably thinks I'm dead." Jace turned back to the boat, running his hand along the smooth wood. "I have to get back soon. Before he does something stupid. He's always doing stupid things, Luke. He's impulsive. Reckless. He doesn't think before he acts."

Luke is dead. Luke was torn apart by Vhagar above Storm's End. You weren't there. You didn't protect him.

But the voice was fading. Growing quieter. Harder to hear over the sound of the waves and the breeze and your soft, steady breathing.

—

The boat took longer than it should have, some days Jace worked on it from sunrise to sunset, his hands raw and calloused, his back aching, his mind fixed on the singular goal of getting home. But other days—more and more days, as the weeks wore on—he found himself... distracted.

The waterfall, for one thing.

It tumbled down the cliff face on the western side of the island, a silver ribbon that caught the sunlight and scattered it into rainbows. The pool at its base was deep and clear and shockingly cold, fed by some underground spring that kept it cool even in the heat of the afternoon. Jace had discovered it on one of his exploratory walks, and he had been drawn back to it again and again.

You came with him sometimes. You would sit on the rocks at the edge of the pool, your feet dangling in the water, your dress hiked up to your knees. You would tilt your face toward the sun and close your eyes, and Jace would find himself watching you instead of the waterfall.

"Are you going to swim or are you going to stare?" you asked one day, not opening your eyes.

"I wasn't staring."

"You were staring."

"I was... appreciating the scenery."

You opened one eye. "The scenery."

"The waterfall," he said, gesturing vaguely. "It's very nice."

You laughed—that bright, unguarded laugh that he had come to love—and he felt something warm bloom in his chest. Something that had nothing to do with the sun.

"Come on, then," you said, and before he could react, you slid off the rock and into the water with a splash that sent droplets arcing through the air like diamonds.

Jace stared at you. You surfaced a moment later, your hair plastered to your head, your dress clinging to your skin, the wet fabric rendered nearly transparent. The water lapped at your collarbones, and you were laughing again, and you looked—

You looked beautiful.

He had known you were beautiful from the moment he opened his eyes in the candlelit cave. But there was something different about you now. Something that had shifted, the curves of your face seemed softer. The color of your eyes seemed deeper. The way you moved—the way you laughed—the way you looked at him—it all seemed more vivid. More precious.

"Are you coming in or not?" you called, treading water in the center of the pool.

Jace pulled his shirt over his head and dove in after you, the water was cold and clean and wonderful. They splashed each other like children, chasing each other around the pool, ducking under the waterfall and emerging gasping and laughing. Jace couldn't remember the last time he had laughed like this—freely, openly, without the weight of duty pressing down on his shoulders.

Your dress clung to you like a second skin, the wet fabric outlining every curve of your body. Jace tried very hard not to notice. He failed. "You're staring again," you said, but your voice was different now. Quieter. Almost shy.

"Sorry." He wasn't sorry.

—

"I was betrothed," he said one evening.

You were sitting on the rocks overlooking the western sea, watching the sun sink toward the horizon in a blaze of orange and pink. Jace sat beside you, close enough that he could feel the warmth of your arm near his. The boat sat half-finished on the beach below, forgotten for the day.

"Was?" you asked.

"Am. I am betrothed." He frowned. "I think. We were supposed to marry before... before I left."

"Before the battle."

"Before the battle, yes." He stared out at the sunset, trying to conjure her face. His betrothed. She was a Targaryen, he was sure of that. Silver hair. Purple eyes. A dragon. But her name—her name wouldn't come. "She's my cousin, I think. Or my step-sister. Both, actually. It's complicated."

"What is her name?"

Jace opened his mouth. The name wasn't there.

"I can't remember," he said, and the admission felt strange. Not frightening—it should have been frightening—but strange. Like discovering a pocket in a familiar coat that he had never noticed before. "I know her face. She's... she's fierce. Brave. She has a dragon. A small one, I think. Or maybe it's large. I can't..."

He trailed off.

You were quiet for a moment. Then, very softly: "Do you love her?"

"Love?" He considered the question. "I don't know. She's family. She's duty. She's... she's what I'm supposed to do, but i care for her, a lot."

"That is not the same as love."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

He didn't say anything else. Neither did you. But your arm was warm against his, and the sunset was beautiful, and when he finally walked you back to the cave, his hand found the small of your back without thinking, and you leaned into the touch instead of pulling away.

—

He forgot about the betrothed entirely by morning.

—

The days grew warmer. Or perhaps they didn't—perhaps it was only that Jace had stopped paying attention to the passage of time. The boat sat on the beach, half-finished, and he told himself he would work on it tomorrow. Tomorrow came and went, and he spent it with you instead—walking the island paths, gathering fruit from the strange golden trees, sitting by the waterfall and talking about nothing.

What are you doing? a voice whispered in the back of his mind. You have to go home. Your mother needs you.

But what did his mother need him for? There was something—something important—something about a throne, a war, a betrayal. But the details were foggy now, blurred like ink left out in the rain.

He remembered her face. Her silver hair. Her voice saying his name, but the rest was slipping away, piece by piece, day by day, and the more he forgot, the more he noticed you.

The way you moved through the meadow, your skirts brushing the wildflowers. The way you hummed when you cooked, some melody he had never heard before but that felt familiar anyway. The way you looked at him sometimes, quick glances from beneath your lashes, as if you were checking to make sure he was still there. Still real. Still alive.

The way your hand felt in his when he helped you over a rocky patch of ground.

The way your laugh echoed off the cliffs and came back to them multiplied, a chorus of joy.

The way your eyes caught the light of the setting sun and held it, like they were made of something more than flesh.

He loved you.

He loved the sound of your voice and the curve of your smile and the gentle patience with which you had nursed him back from the edge of death. He loved your dry humor and your quiet strength and the way you never pressed him for answers he didn't have. He loved the life you had built here, alone on an island that should not exist, and he loved that you had let him into it.

He loved you.

And the more he loved you, the less he remembered.

—

The morning was hot and still, Jace had woken early, as he always did now, but instead of reaching for the axe or walking down to the beach where the half-finished boat sat waiting, he had gone straight to the waterfall.

The pool was cool and clear, fed by the endless rush of water that tumbled down the cliff face in a silver curtain. He shed his clothes on the rocks, just the loose linen breeches you had sewn for him from fabric found somewhere in the depths of the cave, and dove in without hesitation. The cold shock of the water stole his breath and cleared his head, chasing away the last cobwebs of sleep.

He floated on his back, staring up at the pale blue sky, watching the birds wheel overhead. His dark hair fanned out in the water around him. The scars on his shoulder and side had faded to thin white lines, barely visible now. He was stronger than he had ever been, his muscles hardened by weeks of manual labor, his skin tanned golden by the sun.

He should have been thinking about the boat, about going home, about his mother and his brothers and the war.

He was thinking about you. Your laugh, your smile, the way your eyes caught the light. The way your hand felt in his. The way you looked at him sometimes, soft and searching, with something unspoken hovering just behind your lips. He had kissed you before, small kisses, brief and chaste, a press of his lips to your forehead when you fell asleep beside him, a brush of his mouth against your knuckles when you handed him a cup of water. But he had not kissed you properly. He had not kissed you the way he wanted to, the way he had been imagining for weeks, the way that left no doubt about what he felt.

He was thinking about that when he heard your footsteps on the rocks above. "You started without me."

Jace turned in the water, treading easily, and looked up at you. You were standing at the edge of the pool, barefoot on the smooth stone, wearing your dress of pale purple gossamer that drifted around your ankles in the faint breeze. The sun caught the planes of your face and the curve of your neck and the dip of your collarbones, and the sight of you struck him silent for a moment.

"Someone has to," he called back, forcing his voice into something approaching normal. "You sleep too late."

"I was gathering herbs. Some of us have work to do."

"Swimming is work. It builds character."

You laughed, that bright, warm sound that he had come to treasure more than anything else on this island. "Is that what you are doing? Building character?"

"Come in and find out."

You hesitated for just a moment. Your eyes met his across the water, and something flickered in your expression, something tentative and questioning, as if you were making a decision and waiting to see if he would notice.

Then you reached up and untied the clasps at your shoulders.

The dress fell and Jace stopped breathing.

You stood above him in nothing but the sunlight, bare to the sky and the water and his gaze. The curves of your body were soft and smooth, your skin glowing in the morning light. Your breasts were full and round and tight in the open air. Your waist dipped inward in a graceful curve before flaring out to the swell of your hips.

You were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

"Are you coming in or not?" he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.

You smiled, then you dove into the water in one clean, graceful arc, slicing through the surface with barely a splash.

You surfaced inches from him, the water lapped at your collarbones, but beneath the surface he could see the pale shape of your body, distorted by the ripples, impossibly close. Droplets clung to your lashes. Your hair floated around you like ink spilled in water. Your lips were parted and slightly wet, and you were looking at him with those shifting sea-glass eyes, and Jace forgot how to think.

"The water is nice," you said, and your voice was teasing and light, but there was a tremor underneath it.

"Nice," he repeated. He could not stop staring at your mouth.

"Very refreshing."

"I had not noticed."

"No?"

"No."

His hand found your waist beneath the water. Your skin was cool and slick and impossibly soft. You did not pull away. You drifted closer, your bare legs brushing against his, and the contact sent a jolt through him like lightning striking water. He could feel the heat of your core through the cool water, a promise of the warmth waiting for him, and his cock stirred against the confines of his breeches.

"Jace," you whispered.

That was all. Just his name, but the way you said it, breathless and aching and full of want, broke something open inside him.

He kissed you, his mouth strong against yours. His hand tightened on your waist, pulling you flush against him. His other hand came up to cup the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair. You made a small, desperate sound against his lips and kissed him back just as fiercely, your arms winding around his neck, your bare breasts pressing against the hard plane of his chest.

You were bare beneath his hands, there was nothing between his palms and your skin but water. He could feel every curve of you against the hard muscle of his own. His thumbs traced the ridges of your middle, and you shivered, and he swallowed the sound you made. His hands slid lower, cupping the full curve of your arse, kneading the firm flesh, pulling your hips against his so you could feel the rigid length of him pressing against your belly through the wet linen of his breeches.

"Jace," you gasped against his mouth. "Jace, I—"

"Tell me to stop." His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable. "Tell me to stop and I will stop."

"Do not stop." Your fingers dug into his shoulders, nails biting into his sun-warmed skin. "Please do not stop."

He kissed you again, deeper this time, slower. His tongue traced the seam of your lips, and you opened for him with a shuddering breath. The taste of you, sweet and clean and faintly herbal from the medicines you were always brewing, flooded his senses. He explored your mouth thoroughly, learning the texture of your tongue, the ridge of your teeth, the softness of your inner cheeks. You moaned into his mouth and sucked on his tongue, and the sensation went straight to his groin. He could feel your heart pounding against his chest, or perhaps that was his own heart, hammering so hard he thought it might crack his ribs.

Your legs wrapped around his waist beneath the water. The movement was instinctive and natural, and it brought your hips flush against his, the heat of your sex pressing against the hard ridge of his cock through his breeches. He groaned against your mouth, low and rough, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your thighs. You were so warm. Even in the cool water, the core of you radiated a heat that he could feel through the fabric separating them.

He walked you backward through the pool, still kissing you, still holding you, until your back met the smooth stone of the cliff wall. The waterfall rushed beside them, a curtain of silver sound. He kissed the hollow of your throat, feeling your pulse flutter against his lips. He traced the delicate line of your collarbone with his tongue, tasting the clean, mineral tang of the spring water on your skin. He let his mouth drift lower, over the swell of your breast, and when his lips closed around one tight, pebbled nipple, you gasped and arched against him, your fingers fisting in his hair.

He lavished attention on your breasts, suckling first one and then the other, his tongue circling the tight buds, his teeth grazing them with just enough pressure to make you moan. Your breasts were perfect in his hands, full and soft, fitting his palms as though they had been made for him. He kneaded them gently, thumbs brushing over the wet peaks, watching your face contort with pleasure. Your head had fallen back against the stone, your lips parted, your eyes squeezed shut. The sight of you like this, bare and wanting and completely surrendered to his mouth, made his cock throb painfully against his breeches.

"I have wanted this," he breathed against your skin, his voice ragged. "Gods, I have wanted this for so long."

"Then do not wait any longer."

He lifted his head and looked at you. Your eyes were dark with want, your lips swollen from his kisses, your chest rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths. The water lapped at your breasts, revealing and hiding, and he could feel every inch of you pressed against him, every curve, every soft place, every point of contact where your body met his.

"Are you sure?" he asked. He needed to hear it. He needed to know.

In answer, you cupped his face in your hands and pulled him down to you. "I have never been more sure of anything in my life."

He kissed you again, soft and sweet this time, a promise and a question all at once. Then his hand slid down your body beneath the water, tracing the curve of your waist, the swell of your hip, the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. Your legs tightened around his waist, and he felt you tremble against him. His fingers found the heat of you, warm and slick even in the cool water, and he traced the folds of your sex with a feather-light touch. You gasped and bucked against his hand. He explored you slowly, learning the shape of you, the soft outer lips, the slick inner petals, the hard pearl of your pleasure at the apex. When he circled that sensitive nub with his thumb, you cried out, a sound half-lost in the rush of the waterfall. He swallowed it with his mouth, kissing you through it, his touch gentle and searching and patient. He slid one finger inside you, feeling the tight, wet heat of your body grip him, and you moaned against his lips. He added a second finger, stretching you gently, his thumb still circling your sensitive peak, and you writhed against his hand, your inner walls clenching around his fingers.

"Please," you whispered, the word broken and beautiful. "Please, Jace. I need you inside me."

He withdrew his fingers, and you made a small sound of protest that he silenced with a kiss. He reached down and freed himself from his breeches, his cock springing out, hard and thick and aching. The head was dark with need, a bead of moisture already forming at the tip. You glanced down through the clear water and your eyes widened at the sight of him, long and rigid, curving slightly upward toward his belly.

"You are so beautiful," he murmured, positioning himself at your entrance. He rubbed the head of his cock against your slick folds, coating himself in your wetness, teasing you both with the promise of what was to come. "I want to watch your face when I enter you. I want to see what I do to you."

Your legs tightened around his waist, your heels pressing into the small of his back. "Then do it. I want to feel you."

He pushed into you slowly, so slowly, inch by agonizing inch. The water made everything liquid and easy, but he wanted to savor this, the way your eyes fluttered closed, the way your mouth fell open, the way your body welcomed him. You were so tight and so warm and so perfect around him. He could feel every ridge and fold of your inner walls as they gripped him and fluttered and stretched to accommodate his size. Your heat enveloped him, searing even through the cool water, and he had to stop and breathe when he was fully sheathed, his forehead pressed to yours, his whole body shaking with the effort of holding back.

"Look at me," he murmured. "Please. Look at me."

Your eyes opened. They were dark and shining, full of something that looked very much like love. "You feel incredible," you breathed. "I am so full."

He began to move, he withdrew almost completely, feeling the drag of your body against every inch of his length, and then pushed back in with a slow, deep thrust that made you both gasp. The sensation was overwhelming, the tight clutch of your body, the heat, the way your inner muscles rippled around him. He set a steady rhythm, each stroke deliberate and full, sliding into you to the hilt and then pulling back until only the head remained inside you. The water splashed gently around them, ripples spreading outward in concentric circles with every movement. Your legs tightened around his waist, your heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper with every thrust. Your hands slid down his spine, tracing the ridges of muscle that flexed with every movement. You were making soft, breathless sounds, gasps and moans and fragments of his name, and he caught each one with his mouth, kissing you, drinking you down like wine.

"You feel incredible," he groaned against your lips. "So tight. So perfect. I could stay inside you forever."

"So do you," you gasped, your words barely coherent, slurred with pleasure. "Harder, Jace. Please."

He did not need to be asked twice. His pace quickened, his hips slamming against yours with increasing force. The sound of their coupling echoed off the cliff walls, wet and rhythmic, the slap of skin against skin beneath the water. Your breasts bounced with every thrust, and he watched them, mesmerized by the way they moved, the way the water lapped at the peaks. He bent his head and captured one nipple in his mouth again, sucking hard, grazing it with his teeth, and you cried out sharply, your inner walls clenching around him.

He shifted his angle slightly, tilting his hips, and on the next thrust you cried out sharply, your head falling back against the stone, your whole body arching against his. He had found the right spot, that sensitive place deep inside you, and he drove into it again and again, watching your face contort with pleasure. Your brow furrowed and your lips parted and your eyes lost focus, and you were babbling now, a stream of broken words, his name and pleas for more and incoherent praise.

"There," you gasped. "Right there. Do not stop. Please do not stop."

He did not stop. He could not have stopped if the world was ending. There was nothing but you, your body, your voice, your hands on his skin. He felt your inner walls begin to flutter around him, the first warning signs of your approaching climax, and he moved his hand between your bodies, finding the slick, sensitive pearl of you beneath the water. He pressed his thumb against it in tight, circling strokes, matching the rhythm of his thrusts.

"That is it," he murmured against your ear, his voice low and rough. "Let go. I want to feel you come apart around me."

Your climax took you by surprise. He felt it building, the way your breath quickened, the way your nails bit into his shoulders, the way your body tightened around him until he could barely move. And then you shattered, crying out his name, your head thrown back, your whole body arching and shuddering against his. He felt the rhythmic pulsing of your release gripping his cock, your inner walls milking him in waves, and he watched your face contort with pleasure, your mouth open, your eyes squeezed shut, your cheeks flushed dark. The sight of you, bare and beautiful and completely undone, was enough to push him over the edge. He drove into you one final time, burying himself to the hilt, and let go. His release surged through him in hot, pulsing waves, spilling deep inside you, and he groaned your name against the curve of your neck, his body shaking with the force of his climax.

For a long moment, neither of you moved, your breathing slowed, your chest rising and falling against his. Your fingers traced lazy patterns on the back of his neck. He remained inside you, still half-hard, reluctant to separate from the warmth of your body. He could feel his seed and your slickness mingled together, warm and wet around him, and the sensation was so intimate, so perfect, that he never wanted to move again.

"Jace," you whispered, and your voice was hoarse and sweet and utterly content.

He lifted his head and looked at you. Your cheeks were flushed. Your lips were red and swollen. Your hair was a wild tangle around your shoulders. Your eyes were soft and hazy with satisfaction. You had never looked more beautiful.

"I love you," he said.

The words came out before he could stop them, before he even realized he was thinking them. But once they were spoken, he knew they were true. He loved you. He loved you so completely and so absolutely that he could barely remember what his life had been before you. You were everything. You were the sun and the sea and the stars. You were the only thing that mattered.

Your eyes widened. "I love you too," you said. "I have loved you since the moment you opened your eyes."

He kissed you again, softly this time, tenderly, a kiss that tasted of water and salt and promises. And then he held you, your body still wrapped around his, the waterfall cool against his back, the sun warm on his face.

They did not leave the pool for a long time. When they finally climbed out, their skin pruned and their limbs heavy with satisfaction, they did not bother to dress. Jace carried you to a patch of soft grass beneath the flowering trees, and he laid you down among the fallen petals, pink and white and gold. He knelt between your spread thighs and looked down at you, at your bare body glistening with water droplets, at the place where his seed was already beginning to leak from your swollen folds, and he felt himself harden again at the sight.

He made love to you again, slower this time, sweeter. He kissed his way down your body, his mouth tracing the hollow of your throat, the swell of your breasts, the plane of your stomach. He paused to dip his tongue into your navel, making you squirm, and then continued lower, pressing kisses to your hip bones, the sensitive crease where your thighs met your body. When he reached the junction of your thighs, he settled between them and looked up at you. Your scent was intoxicating, musky and sweet and mixed with the salt of his own release. He could see the evidence of their earlier coupling, the glistening slickness that coated your folds, and the sight made him groan with want.

He tasted you properly for the first time. His tongue parted your folds, tracing a slow path from your entrance to the peak of your pleasure. The taste of you combined with the taste of him was earthy and raw and utterly intoxicating. You cried out and fisted your hands in the grass, your hips rising to meet his mouth. He took his time, learning what you liked, alternating between broad, flat strokes of his tongue and focused, circling attention to your sensitive peak. He slid two fingers inside you as he sucked on that tight bundle of nerves, curling them forward to press against that sensitive spot on your inner wall, and you came apart against his mouth, your thighs trembling around his head, your voice breaking on his name, your body gushing wetness that he lapped up eagerly.

After that, they walked back to the cave hand in hand, bare and unashamed, their clothes forgotten on the rocks by the waterfall. The sun had climbed higher in the sky, and the island was alive with birdsong and the scent of flowers. Jace kept his hand on the small of your back as you walked, unable to stop touching you, his thumb tracing small circles against your skin.

When you reached the bedchamber, the bed where he had first woken, the furs soft and the candles flickering on the walls, he took you again. This time you pushed him down onto his back and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips. You looked down at him and you reached between your bodies to guide him to your entrance. He watched his cock disappear inside you, inch by inch, watched the way your folds stretched to accommodate him, and the sight was almost enough to make him spend right there. You sank down until he was fully seated inside you, and you both moaned at the sensation.

You began to move, rolling your hips in a slow, sinuous rhythm. He watched you move above him, your breasts swaying with each roll of your hips, your stomach flexing, your head thrown back in pleasure. He reached up and cupped your breasts, rolling the tight peaks between his fingers, and you gasped and increased your pace. Your thighs flexed as you rose and fell, taking him deeper with every stroke. He guided you with his hands on your waist, helping you find a rhythm that made you both moan, his thumbs pressing into the soft flesh of your hips.

"Look at you," he breathed, his voice full of wonder. "You are so beautiful riding my cock."

You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, and the new angle made you gasp. He thrust up into you from below, meeting your movements, and the wet sound of your bodies joining filled the chamber. Your inner walls were fluttering around him again, your breath coming in short, sharp gasps. He moved one hand to where your bodies were joined and pressed his thumb against your sensitive peak, circling it in time with your movements. You cried out and shattered above him, your body clenching around him, your back arching. The sight of you, lost in pleasure, pushed him over the edge. He thrust up into you one final time and spilled his seed deep inside you, groaning your name, his hands gripping your hips hard enough to leave marks.

You collapsed against his chest, spent and trembling, and he wrapped his arms around you and held you close, still buried inside you. Your breath was warm against his neck. Your heart hammered against his chest. He could feel the thrum of your pulse where your bodies were still joined, and he never wanted to let you go.

You fell asleep like that, joined together, your body draped over his, and when you woke an hour later, the candles had burned lower and the light through the cave entrance had shifted to the gold of late afternoon. You stirred against him, and he felt himself harden again inside you, still buried in your warmth. You smiled sleepily and began to move your hips in a slow, lazy rhythm, and he rolled you onto your back and made love to you again, gentle and tender, whispering your name like a prayer.

After that day, they could not keep their hands off each other, it was as if a dam had broken. Every moment they were together, they were touching. His hand on the small of your back, your fingers tangled in his hair, his lips on your shoulder, your thigh pressed against his beneath the dinner table. The boat sat forgotten on the beach, the wood beginning to weather and grey in the salt air. The days blurred into a haze of sun and water and skin.

He took you in the meadow, surrounded by wildflowers, the grass tickling your bare skin as he moved inside you, your legs wrapped around his waist and your fingers digging into his back. The sun was warm on his shoulders and the scent of blossoms was thick in the air. He rolled onto his back, pulling you on top of him without breaking their connection, and you rode him among the flowers, your head thrown back, your breasts bouncing with every movement, the bright petals clinging to your damp skin.

You pulled him into the storage chamber one afternoon and pressed him against the cool stone wall. You sank to your knees before him on the worn stone floor, looking up at him and you freed him from his breeches with practiced hands. He was already hard, his cock springing out, the tip glistening. You wrapped your hand around the base of him, feeling the weight and heat of him in your palm, and then you leaned forward and took him into your mouth.

He groaned and buried his fingers in your hair as your lips closed around him. You took him slowly, deliberately, your tongue tracing the ridge on the underside of his shaft, your cheeks hollowing as you sucked. You worked him with your mouth and your hand in tandem, your head bobbing in a steady rhythm, your tongue swirling around the sensitive head on every upstroke. He watched you move, mesmerized, watching his cock disappear between your lips again and again, feeling the wet heat of your mouth, the gentle scrape of your teeth. When you took him deeper, relaxing your throat to accommodate his length, he groaned your name and tightened his grip on your hair.

You pulled back, your lips slick and swollen, a strand of saliva connecting you to his tip. You looked up at him and smiled, a slow, wicked smile, and then you took him deep again, hollowing your cheeks, increasing your pace. Your hand cupped him gently, rolling him in your palm, and the dual sensation pushed him closer and closer to the edge. When he could not hold back any longer, he warned you, his voice ragged, but you only took him deeper, and he spilled into your mouth with a ragged cry of your name. You swallowed everything he gave you, your throat working around him, and you did not pull away until he was spent and trembling.

You looked up at him, your lips slick and swollen, a tiny bead of his release at the corner of your mouth that you caught with your tongue. The sight of you, kneeling before him, having taken everything he had to give, made his spent cock twitch with interest. He pulled you to your feet and kissed you deeply, tasting himself on your tongue, and then he spun you around and bent you over the stone table where you mixed your medicines.

He bunched your skirts around your waist, baring you to his gaze. Your folds were already slick and glistening, your arousal dripping down your inner thighs. He ran his hand over the curve of your backside, kneading the firm flesh, and then he positioned himself at your entrance. He entered you from behind in one smooth thrust, burying himself to the hilt, and you gasped and clutched at the worn stone surface. He set a hard, fast rhythm, one hand gripping your hip hard enough to leave fingerprints and the other braced on the table beside yours. The sound of his hips slamming against your backside filled the small chamber, wet and rhythmic, punctuated by your breathless gasps and his low groans.

"Is this what you wanted when you got on your knees for me?" he asked, his voice rough. "Did you want me to bend you over and fuck you until you screamed?"

"Yes," you gasped, pushing back against him. "Yes, I wanted this. I wanted you."

He reached around and found your sensitive peak with his fingers, rubbing tight circles in time with his thrusts. The angle was perfect, driving him deep, hitting that spot inside you with every stroke. Your gasps turned to cries, your cries turned to screams, and when you came, your body clenching around him so tightly that he could barely move, he followed a heartbeat later, groaning your name into the curve of your shoulder, spilling himself deep inside you.

He stayed inside you until he softened, his forehead resting against your shoulder blade, both of you breathing hard. Then he pulled out gently and turned you around, and he kissed you softly, tenderly, his hands cupping your face.

Every night, they fell asleep tangled together in his bed, their bed now, and every morning they woke the same way. Sometimes he would wake first and simply watch you sleep, the soft rise and fall of your chest, the way your lips curved into a faint smile as if you were dreaming of him. Sometimes you would wake first and trace the lines of his scars with your fingertips, until he stirred and rolled on top of you and the day began the way all their days began now, with your legs around his waist and your soft cries filling the candlelit chamber.

He could not get enough of you. He could not get enough of your taste or your scent or the sounds you made when you came apart in his arms. He could not get enough of the way your eyes fluttered closed when he kissed your neck, or the way your back arched when he ran his hands down your sides, or the way you whispered his name in the darkness, over and over, like an incantation. He learned every inch of your body, every sensitive spot, every place that made you gasp and every place that made you moan. He learned the rhythm you liked, slow and deep when you were tender, fast and hard when you were hungry. He learned how to read your body well enough to know which one you needed before you had to ask. He learned that you liked it when he talked to you while he moved inside you, telling you how beautiful you were, how much he loved you, how he wanted to stay buried in your warmth forever.

And every time he was inside you, every time you came apart in his arms, every time he lost himself in the heat and the pleasure and the overwhelming, consuming love he felt for you, something else slipped away.

In many ways, you were. You were his world now. You were everything.

And he was forgetting that there had ever been anything else.

—

The ship appeared on the horizon like a ghost from a life Jace had almost forgotten, he was down by the shore, skipping stones across the glass-flat water while you gathered shells further down the beach.

Then he saw it, a dark shape cut against the glare of the sun. At first he thought it was a cloud, or a trick of the light, or one of the strange birds that sometimes wheeled overhead. But the shape grew larger and sharper and resolved itself into masts and sails and a hull cutting through the water.

Jace's hand froze mid-throw. The stone dropped from his fingers and plunked into the shallows.

"Jace?" Your voice came from further down the beach, laced with concern. "What is it?"

"A ship."

The word felt strange in his mouth, foreign. He had not seen a ship in how long? Months? Years? He could not remember. Time had stopped meaning anything on this island.

He squinted against the sun, his heart beating faster. The ship was large, a warship by the look of it, three masts and a reinforced hull. As it drew closer, he could make out the banner snapping from the mainmast.

A seahorse. Silver on sea-green.

Velaryon.

The name hit him like a wave. His grandfather's house. His mother's allies. His family. The memories surged up from wherever they had been hiding, Dragonstone, Driftmark, the fleet, Lord Corlys, the war.

The war. He was fighting a war. His mother needed him. He had to go home.

"They are here for me," he breathed, and then he was running down the beach, waving his arms over his head, shouting at the top of his lungs. "Here! I am here!"

The soldiers came ashore in a longboat, six of them, their armor gleaming in the sun, the Velaryon seahorse embossed on their breastplates. They were grizzled men, seasoned fighters, and when they saw Jace standing on the beach, their faces broke into expressions of shock and relief and barely contained joy.

"Prince Jacaerys," the lead soldier breathed, dropping to one knee in the sand. "We thought you were dead. The Queen, your mother, she sent ships to every corner of the Narrow Sea. She never gave up hope."

Jace pulled the man to his feet, his hands shaking. "My mother. Is she well? Is the war still—"

"The war continues, my prince. The queen has taken Kings Landing. She will be overjoyed to see you. Everyone believed you had perished at the Gullet."

The Gullet. The arrows. Vermax screaming. The water closing over his head.

Jace shoved the memories aside. "I am alive," he said, and he was laughing now, giddy with relief and adrenaline. "I am alive, and I am coming home."

He turned to find you, you were standing a few paces back, your hands clasped in front of you, watching the soldiers with an expression he could not read. Your strange dress fluttered in the sea breeze, and your eyes were dark and unreadable.

"This is Y/N," Jace said, pulling you forward. You came reluctantly, your bare feet dragging in the sand. "She saved my life. She pulled me from the water and nursed me back to health. I would not be alive without her."

The lead soldier bowed to you, respectful. "The Queen will want to thank you personally, my lady. You have done the realm a great service."

You said nothing. You only nodded, a small, stiff movement.

Jace pulled you aside while the soldiers began unloading supplies from the longboat. His hands were still shaking. His heart was pounding. He felt more alive than he had in weeks, or months, or however long it had been.

"You are coming with me," he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. "I know what you told me about your brother and the exile. But I am a prince, and my mother is the Queen. Whatever power your brother holds, it is nothing compared to the Iron Throne. We can protect you."

Your eyes widened. "Jace..."

"I mean it." He took your hands in his, squeezing tight. "You saved my life. You have been alone here for so long, and I am not going to leave you behind. Come with me to Westeros. I will keep you safe. I swear it."

For a long moment, you only looked at him. Your sea-glass eyes searched his face, looking for something he did not recognize. It might have been doubt or hesitation or some reason to refuse, then you smiled.

"Yes," you said. "I will come with you."

Jace pulled you into his arms and held you tight, his face buried in your hair, breathing in the scent of you, salt and flowers and home. "We leave at dawn," he murmured. "Tomorrow, we leave at dawn."

That night, you cooked a feast, the soldiers were camped on the beach, their tents pitched in a neat row above the tide line. They had offered to share their rations, but you had insisted, telling them in that quiet, gracious way of yours that they were guests on your island and that you would feed them.

Jace helped you carry platters of food down to the beach. There was roasted pork, crackling and golden, seasoned with herbs from your garden. There were strange fruits sliced and arranged in intricate patterns. There was fresh bread baked in the stone oven at the back of the cave, still warm and fragrant. And there was wine, more wine than Jace had ever seen in the cave, deep red wine in clay amphorae, rich and dark and potent.

"Where did you get all this?" he asked, watching you fill cup after cup for the soldiers.

You smiled, your hands steady on the amphora. "I have been saving it. For a special occasion."

The feast was a joyous affair. The soldiers laughed and sang and told Jace stories of the war, battles won and lost, allies gained and betrayed, the endless, grinding struggle for the Iron Throne. He listened with half an ear, nodding in the right places, but his attention kept drifting to you.

You moved among the soldiers like a ghost, refilling cups, offering plates of food, your smile never wavering. The men thanked you with drunken enthusiasm, their faces flushed with wine and gratitude. Jace felt a swell of pride watching you, his savior, his love, soon to be his companion in Westeros, where he would shower you with every luxury you had been denied on this lonely island.

"To the Prince!" one of the soldiers bellowed, raising his cup. "To Prince Jacaerys, returned from the dead!"

"To the Prince!" the others roared.

Jace raised his own cup and drank deep. The wine was stronger than he expected, and it went to his head almost immediately. The stars above seemed to blur and swirl. The fire on the beach danced and flickered. Your hand found his under the table, and he squeezed it tight.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow, we go home

—

He woke to sunlight and the sound of birdsong, his head pounded. His mouth was dry and sour with the aftertaste of wine. He groaned and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to drive back the ache that throbbed behind them. How much had he drunk? He remembered the feast. He remembered the soldiers laughing, the wine flowing, your hand in his beneath the table. He remembered the fire on the beach and the stars wheeling overhead and the giddy, overwhelming relief of knowing that he was finally, finally going home.

The soldiers, Jace sat up so fast that the furs tangled around his legs and nearly sent him sprawling. The soldiers. The ship. They were leaving at dawn. He had to get up. He had to get dressed. He had to—

He stumbled out of the bed and through the winding passages of the cave, his bare feet slapping against the cold stone. The light grew brighter as he ran, golden and warm, and then he burst through the cave entrance and stopped dead at the edge of the cliff.

The beach was empty, his eyes swept the shoreline, back and forth, back and forth, searching for the tents and the longboat and the supply crates. He looked for the ship, the great Velaryon warship with its three masts and its silver seahorse banner, riding at anchor in the bay.

There was nothing there, the white sand stretched out below him, pristine and unmarked. The sea glittered in the morning sun, calm and blue and utterly empty all the way to the horizon. No ship. No sails. No sign that anyone had ever been here at all.

"What..." Jace's voice came out hoarse, cracked. He turned and ran down the path to the beach, his legs still unsteady, his heart pounding against his ribs. He reached the sand and walked through the place where the camp had been, his eyes scanning the ground for any trace of the soldiers. A footprint. A scrap of cloth. A ring of stones where the fire had burned. A spilled cup. Anything.

The sand was smooth and unblemished. The tide had come in during the night and erased whatever marks might have been left behind.

"Jace?" Your voice drifted down from the cliff above, calm and curious. "What are you doing?"

He looked up. You were standing at the mouth of the cave, barefoot, wrapped in one of your flowing dresses, your hair loose around your shoulders. The morning light caught the soft curves of your face and made your eyes gleam.

"The soldiers," Jace called up to you. "The ship. Where are they?"

You tilted your head, your brow furrowing slightly. "What soldiers?"

The question hit him like a physical blow. He stood there on the empty beach, staring up at you, waiting for you to laugh or smile or tell him it was a joke. You only looked back at him with mild, patient confusion.

"The soldiers," he repeated, his voice rising. "The Velaryon soldiers. Six of them. They came yesterday in a warship. They landed on the beach. We had a feast. You served them roast pork and wine. They were going to take us home this morning."

Your expression did not change. That small, puzzled frown remained, as though he were speaking a language you did not quite recognize.

"Jace," you said gently, "I think you must have dreamed it."

"I did not dream it." He was breathing hard now, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "They were here. They said my mother sent them. You spoke to them. You—"

He stopped, you were walking down the path to the beach now, your bare feet moving sure and steady over the rocks. When you reached the sand, you came to stand beside him, and your hand rose to rest against his cheek.

"You had a great deal of wine last night," you said, your voice soft and soothing. "More than I have ever seen you drink. Sometimes wine can make dreams feel very real."

Jace shook his head, pulling away from your touch. "It was not a dream. They were here. They were real."

"Then where are they now?" You gestured at the empty beach, the empty sea, the empty horizon. "Where is the ship? Where are the footprints? Where is the fire? If six men camped on this beach last night, where is the evidence of it?"

The sand was smooth. The sea was empty. There was no smoke rising from the ashes of a campfire. There were no tent pegs driven into the earth. There was no ship, no longboat, no sign that anyone but the two of you had ever set foot on this island.

"I do not know," he said, and his voice sounded thin and uncertain even to his own ears. "I do not understand."

You stepped closer, and your hand found his cheek again, and this time he did not pull away. Your palm was cool against his flushed skin.

"You have been through so much," you murmured. "Your body is still healing. Your mind is still healing. Dreams and memories and wishes can all blur together. But you are here with me, and you are safe. That is what matters."

Jace stared down at the sand. His head was pounding. His thoughts were tangled, slipping over each other like stones in a landslide. He remembered the feast so clearly, the taste of the roast pork, the sound of the soldiers' laughter, the weight of your hand in his. He remembered the banner snapping in the wind, silver seahorse on sea-green. He remembered the lead soldier kneeling in the sand, the shock and relief on his weathered face.

But the beach was empty.

"Perhaps you are right," he said slowly, and the words felt like surrender. "Perhaps I dreamed it."

You smiled, and your smile was warm and gentle and full of something that might have been relief. "Come back inside. I will make you something to eat. You will feel better once you have eaten."

He let you lead him back up the path and into the cave. He let you sit him down at the stone table. He let you place a plate of fruit and fresh bread in front of him, and he ate without tasting it, his mind still chasing the fragments of the dream that had felt so real.

That was what you had called it. A dream. And perhaps you were right. Perhaps the longing for home had grown so strong that his mind had conjured a rescue where none existed. Perhaps the wine had done the rest, weaving the longing into something that felt like memory.

Perhaps.

He did not think about it for the rest of the day, it was not until late afternoon that he noticed the pigs, he was walking past the enclosure without any particular destination in mind, his feet carrying him along the familiar path, when he stopped and frowned.

The pigs had always been numerous, he had never bothered to count them exactly, but now, looking at the enclosure, he could see that there were more than there had been the day before. Many more.

The sows jostled and grunted. The piglets tumbled over each other in the dirt. They were fat, healthy animals with glossy coats and floppy ears, rooting in the churned earth of the enclosure, there were at least twice as many pigs as there had been the day before.

Jace stood at the stone wall and stared at them. The pigs stared back, their small dark eyes unblinking, he stood there for a long time.

—

Days later, Jace found the hole by accident, though later he would wonder whether anything on this island ever happened by accident at all. He had been exploring, something he did more and more often now, wandering the island's paths and cliffs and hidden coves as if searching for something he could not name. He had walked further than usual that afternoon, following a thin stream that wound through a cleft in the cliffs, its water cold and clear and tasting faintly of minerals when he cupped his hands to drink. The stream led him deeper into the interior than he had ever gone before, past stands of flowering trees whose blossoms released a sweet, drowsy perfume, past moss-covered boulders that loomed overhead like the shoulders of buried giants and that was when he saw it.

A dark opening in the rock face, half-hidden by a curtain of flowering vines that spilled down from the cliff above in cascades of white and purple. The vines were thick and tangled, but they did not quite conceal the gap behind them. An opening wide enough for a man to walk through without ducking his head.

He should not have gone in. He knew that, even as his feet carried him forward, even as his hands reached out to push the vines aside. A voice in the back of his mind, the voice that had once belonged to a prince trained in caution and suspicion, whispered that he should turn around and walk back to the sunlit meadow and forget he had ever seen this place. But that voice had grown very quiet in the months he had spent on this island, and something else had grown louder.

The darkness swallowed him whole. He stood motionless for a long moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust, one hand pressed flat against the cool stone of the wall. The passage sloped downward, the floor worn smooth by the passage of time or water or the tread of feet. He could not see more than a few feet ahead, but he could feel the space around him opening up, widening into something larger than a simple tunnel. The air was dry and still, the silence so complete that he could hear his own heartbeat thudding in his ears.

He walked deeper, the passage twisted once, then twice, then opened abruptly into a chamber so vast that Jace's footsteps echoed back to him from walls he could not see. Thin shafts of daylight pierced down through cracks in the ceiling high above, illuminating the space in pale, dusty columns that fell across the floor like the bars of a cage made of light and in those columns of light, Jace saw them.

Armor.

Dozens of sets, perhaps hundreds, arranged against the walls and stacked in corners and laid out on stone slabs that rose from the floor like altars. Breastplates and greaves and gauntlets and helms, their surfaces catching the thin light and throwing it back in dull gleams. Some were polished and gleaming, as if they had been cleaned and oiled with meticulous care. Others were rusted and crumbling, their edges flaking away into red-brown dust, their shapes barely recognizable beneath the corrosion of years or decades or centuries. Swords and axes and spears and maces, their blades dull with age and disuse, their hilts wrapped in leather that had rotted away to nothing.

And clothes, stacks and stacks of clothes, tunics and breeches and cloaks and boots and belts and gloves. They were piled against the walls in drifts that rose nearly to the ceiling, some of them neatly folded as if awaiting a return that would never come, others tossed carelessly into corners in tangled heaps of faded fabric. Some were new, the dyes still bright, the wool still soft, the linen still crisp and clean. Others were ancient and moth-eaten, their threads crumbling at the slightest touch, their colors bleached to ghostly echoes of what they had once been.

Jace stood in the center of the chamber and turned in a slow circle, his breath caught in his throat, his heart hammering against his ribs like a fist beating against a locked door. The scale of it was incomprehensible. There were so many. Too many. More than one person could ever need. More than a dozen people could ever need. More than a hundred people could ever need. This was not a collection. This was a graveyard for the belongings of the dead.

His eyes caught on a breastplate near his feet, and the world tilted sideways, it was newer than the others. Its metal still held a faint gleam beneath a thin layer of dust, and its leather straps were still supple, and on its chest, embossed in silver that caught the light like a blade, was the seahorse of House Velaryon.

He remembered the lead soldier kneeling in the sand, his weathered face breaking into shock and relief. He remembered the feast on the beach, the crackling fire, the roast pork and the wine and your hand in his beneath the table. He remembered waking to find the beach empty and the sea bare and you standing at the mouth of the cave with your head tilted and your brow furrowed, asking him what soldiers he meant, telling him it was only a dream, only a dream, nothing more than a dream.

The soldiers who had never been here. The soldiers he had only imagined. Their armor was lying at his feet.

He stumbled backward. His heel caught on a gauntlet and sent it skittering across the stone floor with a sound like a startled crab. The noise echoed through the chamber and died away into silence, and Jace stood there with his hands shaking and his mind blank with a terror so absolute that it felt almost like calm. He could not think. He could not breathe. He could not make sense of what he was seeing, and some part of him understood with terrible clarity that making sense of it would destroy everything he had built on this island. Every moment of peace. Every hour of love. Every whispered word in the darkness. All of it balanced on the edge of this pit, and if he looked down, if he truly looked, he would fall.

"What are you doing here?"

He spun around so fast that his boots skidded on the stone floor, his heart slammed against his ribs, once, twice, a frantic drumbeat of pure animal terror.. "Nothing. I was only looking, I wanted to understand—"

"You were only looking." You stepped out of the shadows and into the thin light that filtered down from the cracks in the ceiling, and the expression on your face made his stomach drop. The gentle warmth he had come to love was gone. The softness was gone. Your jaw was tight, the muscles corded beneath your skin, and your hands were clenched into fists at your sides, and your eyes were fixed on him with a glittering intensity that pinned him in place like a butterfly on a board. "At what, precisely? At the belongings of dead men? At the evidence of my sins? At the proof that I am not the gentle, lonely woman you thought you loved?"

Your hands unclenched and clenched again, the fingers curling and uncurling in a rhythm that seemed almost involuntary, as though you were strangling something invisible.

"I asked you a question, Jace." Your voice dropped, soft and dangerous. "What are you doing here?"

He should have been afraid. He was afraid. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up, and his heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his throat, and every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to run. But something else rose up inside him too, some scrap of the prince he used to be, some stubborn remnant of the boy who had faced down enemies on the battlefield and never flinched. He straightened his spine and met your eyes and refused to look away.

"Why are they here?" he asked, gesturing at the armor that surrounded them. "All of these. Dozens of sets. Hundreds, maybe. The soldiers who came for me, their armor is here. The same breastplate, the same sigil. It wasn't a dream was it? What happened to them?"

You stared at him. A muscle in your jaw twitched.

"It does not matter."

"It matters to me."

"It does not matter, Jace." Your voice was rising now, cracking at the edges, splintering into something raw and desperate. "It should not matter, Jace. Those men are gone. Let them stay gone. Let the past stay buried. We were happy. We were so happy. Why could you not leave well enough alone?"

"Because I need to know the truth."

"The truth will not make you happy. The truth will not keep you warm at night. The truth will not hold you when you wake from nightmares and tell you that everything is going to be all right."

"The truth is the truth. I deserve to know it."

You laughed, it was sharp and bitter and jagged, the laugh of someone who had been hurt too many times to believe in fairness anymore. "You sound just like them. Every single one of them. They all wanted the truth. They all thought they deserved to know. And do you know what happened when they found it?"

Jace did not answer. He did not need to answer. The armors answered for him.

"What happened to the soldiers?" he asked instead. His voice was very quiet. "The ones who came for me. The ones whose armor is lying at my feet. What did you do to them?"

Your face crumpled, the coldness shattered and the fury crumbled and underneath it was something far older and far more terrifying, a grief so immense it had calcified into rage over centuries of solitude. The tears that spilled down your cheeks were real, hot and sudden and utterly convincing.

"Why do you want to leave me?" you screamed, the sound echoed off the stone walls and came back multiplied, a chorus of accusations that battered him from every direction. Your voice was raw and ragged, shredded at the edges, and the pain in it was so enormous that Jace felt his own heart clench in response. The anger that had been building in him, the righteous fury at being lied to, began to waver. How could he be angry at someone who was in so much pain? How could he accuse someone who was so clearly suffering?

"Why do you want to leave me?" you cried again, and your voice broke on the last word. "Why do they always leave? Every single one of them, they wash up on my shore and I save them and I nurse them back to health and I give them everything I have, everything I am, and they tell me they love me, they look me in the eyes and they swear they love me, and I believe them every time, every single time I believe them because I am so desperate to be loved by someone, anyone, and then they remember. They always remember. And they always leave. They always want to go home. Why am I never enough? Why am I never enough for anyone?"

The question hung in the air, raw and bleeding. Your chest was heaving. Your hands were shaking. You looked at him with those burning eyes, and Jace felt his resolve crumbling, you were not a monster, you were wounded, a woman who had been abandoned and betrayed so many times that she had forgotten how to trust. How could he blame you for what you had done?

"I love you," he said, and his voice was shaking but he meant it with every fiber of his being. "I love you. I do. I love you more than I have ever loved anyone."

"Then why do you want to leave me?" Your voice was small now, wounded, the fury draining away to reveal the vulnerability beneath. "If you love me, why isn't that enough? Why do you need to go back? Why can't you just stay here with me? Why do you need a mother and brothers and a war and a throne? Why can you not just stay here and be mine?"

"Because I have a family." He was pleading now, hating himself for the pain he was causing you. "Because I have a mother who needs me and brothers who are waiting for me. Because there is a war, a war I was fighting, a war I was supposed to win. Because I have a duty."

"A duty." You laughed, but it was a broken sound, a laugh that was really a sob. "Duty. Honor. Family. I have heard all of this before. Every single one of them said the same thing. They had to go back. They had responsibilities. They had people who needed them. And what about me? What about what I need? I needed them. I loved them. And they left me anyway. They all left me. Just like you will leave me."

"I don't want to leave you," Jace said, and the words felt inadequate, pathetic. "I want to go home, yes. I want to see my mother. I want to protect her from the enemies who would see her dead and her throne stolen. But I want to take you with me. I want you to meet her. I want to marry you properly, before the whole court, with a septon and a cloak and vows spoken in the light of the Seven. I want to make you my queen. When I sit the Iron Throne, you will sit beside me."

He reached for you, desperate to comfort you, to wipe the tears from your cheeks. You did not pull away, but you did not lean into his touch either.

"I do not care what you did to these men," he said, his voice low and fierce. "I do not care what you have done. I love you. I love you more than I have ever loved anything in my life. I just want you to come with me. Please. Come with me."

For a long moment, you were silent, then you shook your head. Slowly. Miserably. With the exhausted certainty of someone who had heard these same promises too many times to count.

"It is not true," you whispered. "They always say this. When my brother sends them here, they always tell me they love me. They always promise they will stay. They look at me with those earnest eyes and they swear they are different from the others, and I believe them. I always believe them. Because I want to believe. Because I want so desperately for it to be true. And then they remember who they were before, and everything changes."

You pulled your hands out of his grip and wrapped your arms around yourself, your shoulders hunching inward as though you were trying to make yourself smaller, harder to hurt. Jace felt a surge of protectiveness so strong it almost knocked the breath out of him. He wanted to hold you. He wanted to shield you from everything that had ever hurt you.

"They remember their old lives," you continued, your voice barely above a whisper, "and they tell me they will save me. They tell me they will break the curse and take me away from here and marry me in a real sept with real vows. They promise me everything I have ever wanted. And for a little while I let myself hope. I let myself believe that this time will be different. This time the love will be real."

Your voice caught on the last word, splintering into something that was almost a sob. Jace felt tears prick at the corners of his own eyes. Gods, how could anyone have done this to you? How could anyone have been so cruel?

"But they never mean it," you said. "They are only saying what they think I want to hear. They are only trying to placate me, to buy themselves time, to find a way to escape. And when they try to break the curse and they fail, when they realize their love is not strong enough, when they understand that they do not really love me at all, they run. They try to leave. And I—"

You stopped. Your hands were trembling violently now, the fingers twisting together in front of you.

"What do you do?" Jace asked, though he already knew the answer. He knew it, and it horrified him, and yet somehow he could not bring himself to judge you for it. You had been hurt. You had been betrayed. You had been left alone for so long that you had forgotten what it felt like to be held. How could anyone expect you to react with grace when another man tried to abandon you?

"I do not let them leave." Your voice was barely a whisper, so quiet he had to lean closer to hear it. "They do not get to leave. They do not get to go back to their families and forget about me while I rot here alone. They stay. They stay here with me. Forever."

"The pigs," Jace said.

"They are happier as pigs," Your voice took on a defensive edge, almost childlike in its insistence. "They do not remember their old lives. They do not feel the disappointment. They do not want to leave. They are content. They have food and shelter and each other. I take care of them. I take better care of them than anyone ever took care of me." Your eyes searched his face, looking for understanding, looking for absolution. "They are better off this way. I gave them peace. I gave them a life without pain. Do you know what my brother gave me? Do you know what it feels like to be left here, alone, for centuries, with nothing but the sound of the waves and the crying of the gulls and the knowledge that no one is ever coming for you?"

Jace's throat was dry. "Why did you not do it to me?"

"Because I thought you were different." Your voice was small now, so small it was almost swallowed by the shadows of the cave. "Because when I looked at you, when I held you through the fevers and listened to you talk about your home and your family, I thought—I hoped—that you might really love me." A tear slid down your cheek, and you did not wipe it away. "I thought you would stay."

The guilt hit Jace like a physical blow. You had hoped. You had let yourself hope, despite everything, despite centuries of betrayal and abandonment, and he was about to become just another name on the long list of people who had disappointed you. He was about to leave you, just like all the others. He was about to prove that your hope had been misplaced, that love was a lie, that no one would ever truly choose you.

"I am sorry," he said, and he meant it with every part of himself. "I am so sorry. I do not want to leave you. I want to stay. I want both things. I want to go home, but I want you to come with me. Can I not have both things?"

"No one ever wants both things." You pulled your hands away, and your expression was hardening again, the vulnerability sealing itself back behind walls of old resentment. "They want to leave. They always want to leave. As soon as they remember their old lives, they want to leave. And when they realize they cannot break the curse, they run. They all run. And I have to stop them because if I do not stop them they will leave me alone again, and I cannot be alone again, Jace, I cannot, I would rather die than be alone again—"

"What curse?" Jace cut through your spiraling words, his voice urgent. "You said they could not break the curse. What curse?"

"It does not matter," you said. Your voice was empty now, drained of all the fury and grief that had filled it moments before. "You are going to leave me too. You are going to try to break the curse, and you are going to fail, because no one has ever succeeded, and then you are going to run. Just like all the others."

"Tell me what the curse is. Please. Let me help you."

You stared at him for a long, long moment. The candles flickered in their alcoves, their flames guttering in a draft he could not feel. The armor gleamed dully in the shadows, the relics of a hundred men who had stood where he was standing now and made the same promises he was making. Somewhere far away, muffled by stone and distance, the pigs grunted in their enclosure. The men who had failed. The men whose love had not been strong enough.

"My brother exiled me here," you said finally. Your voice was flat now, reciting facts rather than feelings, as though you had told this story so many times that the words had lost all meaning. "Centuries ago. So long ago that the world I came from does not exist anymore, and when I disobeyed him, when I refused to do what he asked of me, he put a curse on this island as punishment. I cannot leave. No ship will carry me. No boat will bear my weight. If I try to swim, the sea itself will rise up and drag me back to shore. I am bound here, bound to this rock, until the curse is broken or the world ends."

"How do I break it?"

You looked at him, and your eyes were ancient and exhausted and utterly without hope. Jace felt his heart twist. You had been disappointed so many times. You did not believe he could do it.

"There is a cave," you said. "Behind the waterfall on the western cliff. There is a statue inside, a statue of me carved from black stone, wrapped in chains. I cannot enter the cave. It is spelled against me." Your hand rose unconsciously to your neck, as if feeling for the links of a collar that was not there. "If the statue is broken, the curse will be lifted. The chains will fall. I will be free."

"Then I will break it."

"It is not that simple." Your voice was quiet now, almost gentle, and there was something in it that felt like a warning, a kindness, an attempt to protect him from the disappointment you were certain was coming. "Only a man who knows my true nature can destroy the statue. Only a man who has seen what I am, what I have done, every monstrous thing I have committed in my long and miserable existence, and still loves me truly. Not charmed. Not tricked. Not fogged by the magic of this island. Real love. Clear-eyed love. Love that looks at the worst of me and does not flinch." You paused. "If his love is false, if it is only gratitude or loneliness or the lingering effects of my enchantments, the statue will not break. It will not even crack. And I will know. I will know that his love was a lie."

"I am not them," he said.

"You are. You are exactly like them."

"No." He stepped forward and took your face in his hands, his thumbs brushing the tears from your cheeks. "I am not them. I am going to break the curse. I am going to set you free. I am going to take you away from this island and give you the life you deserve. I swear it."

"You cannot promise that."

"I can. I am." He pressed his forehead against yours. "I love you. I know what you are. I know what you have done. And I love you anyway. I love you not despite the worst of you but because of it. Because the worst of you was born from pain, and I want to heal that pain. I want to be the one who finally proves to you that love is real. That you are worthy of it. That you have always been worthy of it."

You let out a sound that was half laugh and half sob. "You are a fool, Jacaerys Velaryon."

"Take me to the cave behind the waterfall," he said. "Let me prove it."

"Alright," you whispered, as if you had expected him to ask. "I will take you. But do not say I did not warn you."

You turned and walked out of the cave, and Jace followed you, his heart pounding and his mind clear and his love for you burning in his chest like a flame that no wind could extinguish. He was going to save you. He was going to be the one. He was going to prove that love was stronger than any curse, stronger than any magic, stronger than centuries of solitude and betrayal.

He had to be the one. The alternative was unthinkable.

—

The walk was silent, you led him along the familiar path, the meadow with its strange flowers swaying in the breeze, the grove of fruit trees with their golden bounty hanging heavy from the branches, the rocky outcropping that overlooked the western shore where the sea stretched out blue and endless and utterly indifferent to what was about to happen. The waterfall was roaring louder than usual, or perhaps it only seemed that way. Perhaps it was the blood pounding in his ears. Perhaps it was the weight of what he was about to do pressing down on him like a physical thing, a stone laid across his chest that made every breath feel shallow and insufficient.

You stopped at the edge of the pool, where the water churned white with the endless cascade. Your face was pale. Your hands were shaking at your sides, the fingers twisting together in that nervous gesture he had come to recognize, the one that always made him want to pull you into his arms and promise you that everything would be alright.

"There," you said, pointing, Jace squinted through the spray. Behind the curtain of falling water, barely visible through the silver torrent, was a dark opening in the rock face. A cave mouth, smaller than the one you lived in, half-hidden by the cascade. It looked like something that did not want to be found.

"I cannot enter," you said, and your voice was quiet, almost reverent. "The spell prevents me. The moment I step through the water, I am pushed back. It burns." You wrapped your arms around yourself, your fingers digging into the flesh of your upper arms. The gesture was meant to look vulnerable, meant to make him feel protective. It worked. "You have to go alone."

Jace nodded. He had expected this. Of course he had expected this. The hero always had to face the trial alone. That was how these stories went.

"I will come back," he said.

You did not answer. Your eyes were fixed on the waterfall, dark and terrified, and your lower lip trembled just slightly, just enough for him to notice.

"Hey." He touched your chin, turning your face toward him. Your skin was cold beneath his fingers. "I will come back. I promise."

"Everyone promises." Your voice was barely a whisper, and there was something in it that snagged at his heart like a fishhook. "Everyone who has ever stood on this shore has promised to come back."

"I am not everyone."

He kissed your lips and for just a moment he felt something move beneath the surface. A flicker. A pulse. Something that was not quite human. Then the moment passed, and you were just you again, fragile and frightened and looking at him with those sea-glass eyes that held all the sadness in the world.

He turned away before he could lose his nerve. He dove into the pool, and the water closed over his head like a fist.

The cold was shocking. It was more than cold. It was the absence of warmth, the absence of life, a cold that sank into his bones and wrapped around his heart and squeezed. He surfaced gasping, his breath torn from his lungs in a ragged gasp, and swam toward the waterfall with strong, desperate strokes. The roar grew louder as he approached, a wall of sound that pressed against his eardrums until he could hear nothing else. The spray blinded him, stinging his eyes, filling his mouth with the taste of minerals and stone. The current tried to push him back, tried to shove him away from the cave entrance as if the water itself did not want him to pass.

But he kept swimming. He had promised. He had promised he would come back, he reached the rock face and pulled himself up onto a narrow ledge, slick with moss and running water, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the wet stone. The cave entrance yawned before him, dark and silent and somehow hungry, as if the darkness itself was waiting for him to step inside. He looked back once. You were still standing at the edge of the pool, a pale figure in a pale dress, your hands pressed to your mouth. You looked like a ghost. You looked like a memory of someone who had died a long time ago.

Then he turned and walked into the darkness.

—

The cave was small, smaller than he had expected. The passage was short, barely twenty paces, the walls rough and wet beneath his trailing fingers, the floor sloping downward into the heart of the rock. The roar of the waterfall faded behind him, muffled by the stone, until the only sound was the drip of water and the soft scuff of his bare feet on the rock and the steady, insistent pounding of his own heart.

The passage opened into a round chamber no larger than your bedchamber back in the main cave. The walls were smooth and wet, glistening with moisture, catching the light and throwing it back in a thousand tiny reflections. The only illumination came from somewhere above, a thin shaft of daylight that pierced through a crack in the rock and fell in a single golden beam onto the center of the chamber. It was like something out of a sept, that beam of light. It was like the light that fell on an altar, or a tomb, or a place where something sacred had been buried and forgotten.

And in the center of the chamber was the statue.

It was you, smooth and luminous, carved with such skill that it seemed almost alive. The surface of the stone had been polished to a soft gleam, catching the golden light and holding it, and the details were so fine that Jace could see the individual strands of hair. The statue knelt on a stone pedestal, its head bowed in an attitude of submission or prayer, its face frozen in an expression of such profound sorrow that Jace felt his chest tighten just looking at it. The eyes were closed. The lips were slightly parted, as if caught in the middle of a sigh. The shoulders were hunched forward, the spine curved, every line of the body speaking of exhaustion and despair and the weight of an eternity spent alone.

And the hands, the statue's hands were raised in front of its chest, palms facing each other, fingers slightly curled as if holding something invisible. And around those marble wrists, coiled so tightly they seemed to be part of the stone itself, were two snakes.

No. Not snakes. Bracelets. Golden bracelets, each one shaped like a serpent eating its own tail. But the serpents were not connected to each other. They were separate, independent, each one locked around a single wrist, each one devouring itself in an endless cycle of consumption and renewal. Their golden eyes gleamed in the shaft of daylight, bright and watchful and aware. Their scales were so finely detailed that Jace could count every one, each scale overlapping the next in perfect, reptilian precision. Their jaws were clamped tight around their own tails, and their bodies were wound around the marble wrists in coils that looked tight enough to bruise.

They were not chains. Not exactly. They were something worse. They were a trap that could not be escaped because there was nothing to break. The snakes held her wrists, and her wrists held the snakes, and neither could let go, and the whole thing was a perfect, closed loop of imprisonment that had no beginning and no end.

Jace stood in the darkness at the edge of the chamber, staring at the statue. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat, in his temples, in the tips of his fingers. His hands were slick with water and sweat. The marble figure knelt in its beam of light, motionless and patient, and the golden snakes watched him with their glittering eyes, and the silence was so complete that he could hear the blood rushing through his own veins.

He bent down and picked up a rock from the floor of the cave. It was heavy, sharp-edged, big enough to do damage. He turned it over in his hands, testing its weight, feeling the rough edges bite into his palm. Break the statue. Break the curse. Simple. You had told him what to do. You had told him it was simple.

He took a step toward the pedestal.

"Are you quite certain about this?"

Jace froze, the voice was male. Low and smooth and echoing, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It bounced off the wet stone walls, slid through the darkness, coiled around him like smoke, like water, like something that had been waiting in the shadows for a very long time. It was not a human voice. It was too resonant for that, too layered, as if many voices were speaking at once in perfect, dissonant harmony.

"Who is there?" Jace demanded. His voice sounded too loud in the silence, too harsh, too frightened. He hated how frightened he sounded.

No answer. Just the dripping of water. The distant, muffled roar of the falls.

"You should think very carefully before you do something you will regret for the rest of your life. Which, I should warn you, may not be very long."

Jace spun around, the rock raised like a weapon. The chamber was empty. The passage behind him was empty. The shadows pressed against the walls, still and silent and utterly unoccupied.

"I said who is there?"

"A friend." The voice was almost gentle now, almost kind. It was the voice of a father speaking to a wayward son, a mentor guiding a confused student. "Someone who does not want to see you make a mistake you cannot undo. Someone who has watched this same scene play out more times than I can count, and who is very, very tired of seeing young men throw their lives away."

Jace's grip tightened on the rock. The edges cut into his palm, grounding him. "Show yourself."

"I cannot. I am not really here. I am just a voice in the dark. A warning. A kindness, if you will let me be." The voice paused, and when it spoke again, it was softer. Sadder. "I am the only person on this island who is actually trying to help you, Jacaerys."

"Don't listen to it," Jace muttered to himself. He turned back toward the statue. "It's just another part of the curse. It's trying to stop you. She said there would be things trying to stop you."

"Is that what she told you?" The voice sounded amused now, deeply and darkly amused. "That the curse is the villain? That she is the victim? How very convenient for her. How very convenient that she has a story that makes her the helpless damsel and everyone else the monster. She tells that story very well. She has had centuries of practice."

Jace ignored it. He stepped closer to the pedestal. The marble woman knelt in her beam of light, motionless and sorrowful. The golden snakes glinted.

"She is very beautiful, isn't she?" the voice continued, and now it was almost conversational, almost casual, as if they were two old friends discussing the weather. "Of course she is. She's had centuries to perfect the act. The dresses. The smiles. The way she looks at you like you are the only man in the world, like you are the answer to every prayer she has ever whispered into the darkness. It is all very convincing. It is meant to be. She has been refining it for longer than your entire bloodline has existed."

"You do not know anything about her."

"I know everything about her." The voice was sharper now, the amusement draining away to reveal something harder underneath. "I know what she is. I know what she has done. I know how many men have stood exactly where you are standing now, holding a rock just like that one, thinking they were going to be the one. The special one. The one whose love was strong enough." A pause, heavy with meaning. "Do you know how many of them succeeded?"

Jace did not answer.

"None. Not one. In all the centuries she has been trapped on this island, not a single man has broken that statue. Do you know why? Because it cannot be broken. It is a trap. It is the bait, and you are the fish, and you are swimming toward it with your mouth wide open."

"You are lying." Jace's voice was shaking now. He hated that it was shaking. "You are just another part of the curse. You are trying to stop me from freeing her."

"I am trying to stop you from destroying yourself." The voice was closer now, seeming to come from just behind his left shoulder. He spun around, but there was nothing there. Only shadows. Only the dripping of water. "Let me ask you something, Jacaerys. Can you remember your mother's name?"

He opened his mouth but nothing came out, the name was gone. It had been there a moment ago, he was sure of it. He could see her face, silver hair and sad eyes, could feel the shape of her in his memory. But the name, the name would not come.

"Your brothers," the voice continued, relentless and calm. "How many brothers do you have? What are their names?"

"I have brothers. I know I have brothers." His voice sounded desperate, even to his own ears. "Luke-Lucerys. And the others. The little ones."

"You are reciting words. You are not remembering. She has taken them from you, piece by piece, day by day. She has been stealing your memories since the moment you arrived. The food she feeds you. The wine she pours you. The herbs she puts in your medicine. They do not just heal your wounds. They erase you. They hollow you out. They make room for her."

Jace's mind was blank. Empty. There was nothing there but fog, thick and white and impenetrable, where his memories should have been.

"She has taken them from you," the voice said, and now it was almost gentle again, almost pitying. "Piece by piece. Day by day. Every moment you spend in her presence, she is stealing more of who you are. Your family. Your home. Your past. Your very self. And you call that love? You think that is what love looks like?"

"She saved my life."

"She kept you alive because she needed you. There is a difference. She needs a man to break the curse. She always needs a man to break the curse. That is how it works. That is how it has always worked. She lures them in with her beauty and her vulnerability and her sad, sad story, and she makes them love her, and then she sends them here to die. Because no one can break the curse. No one. The statue does not break. It has never broken. And when the man fails, when he realizes his love is not strong enough, she has her excuse. She was right all along. No one really loves her. So she turns them into pigs and waits for the next shipwreck, the next castaway, the next fool who will believe her lies."

He kept going "You think that is love?" The voice laughed, a soft and pitying laugh. "You think a woman who erases your past and steals your future and traps you on an island where you can never leave loves you? You think any of this is real?"

"I love her." Jace's voice cracked. "I know I love her. That is real. Whatever else she has done, my love for her is real."

"Oh, it feels real. I am sure it does. But do you know why it feels real?" The voice paused, letting the question hang in the darkness. "Because she makes it feel real. That is what she does. That is what the magic does. It wraps around your mind and makes you think you are feeling something true. But it is not true, Jacaerys. It is a trick. A trap. You have been ensnared since the moment you opened your eyes in that candlelit room and saw her kneeling beside your bed like a worried bride."

Jace's arm was lowering. The rock felt heavier now, so heavy he could barely hold it. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking.

"She told me you would say things like this," he said, but his voice was weak. Uncertain. "She told me the curse would try to stop me. She warned me there would be voices."

"The curse is not stopping you. I am not the curse. I am the only thing standing between you and an eternity of rooting in the dirt with all the other men who believed her lies." The voice was right next to his ear now, so close he could feel the cold breath of it against his skin. "Do you want to know the real story, Jacaerys? Do you want to know who she really is?"

He did not answer. He did not want to know. He wanted to cover his ears and run back through the waterfall and hold you in his arms and forget this voice had ever spoken to him. But his feet would not move. His body would not obey him.

"She is not a victim," the voice whispered. "She is not a lonely woman trapped by a cruel brother. That is a story she invented centuries ago because it makes men feel protective. It makes them feel noble. It makes them want to save her. The truth is much simpler, and much uglier. She is a goddess, a thing that was worshipped before your ancestors crawled out of the mud. And she was imprisoned here not as punishment, but as containment. Because she is dangerous. Because she feeds on devotion the way a spider feeds on flies."

"You are lying."

"Am I? If you break that statue," the voice said, "she will be free. And the moment she is free, she will have no more use for you. Her love for you, such as it is, will vanish. It is not real love, Jacaerys. It is bait. It is a lure. It is the promise of everything you have ever wanted, dangled in front of you to make you do what she needs. And once you have done it, once you have served your purpose, she will discard you like all the others."

"Stop." Jace's voice cracked on the word.

"That is the part she did not tell you, is it not? She did not tell you that her love is conditional. She did not tell you that it lasts only as long as she is trapped. The moment she is free, the magic breaks both ways. The chains fall from her wrists, and her love for you falls with them."

"You are lying." Jace's voice was a raw whisper, barely audible over the distant roar of the waterfall. "You are the curse. You are trying to stop me from freeing her."

"She told every man before you the exact same story. Word for word. The cruel brother. The lonely exile. The curse that can only be broken by true love. She told it to the knight in rusted armor whose bones are rotting in that cave. She told it to the merchant captain whose shield is propped against the wall. And you are just the latest audience."

"Stop."

"She does not love you. She cannot love you. She is not capable of love. She is capable of hunger, and she calls it love because that is what makes men stay. But it is not love. It has never been love. It is just need. Just appetite. Just the endless, grinding loneliness of a creature that consumes everything it touches and is still never full."

Jace opened his eyes. The statue knelt in its beam of light. The golden snakes watched him with their glittering, knowing eyes. The marble face was frozen in its expression of eternal sorrow.

What if the voice was right?

What if none of it was real?

What if he broke the statue, and your love disappeared, and he spent the rest of his life chasing a ghost?

What if he was just the next fool in line?

"Go back," the voice whispered. "Go back to the beach. Build your boat. Leave this place while you still can. While you still remember enough of yourself to want to leave. She will try to stop you. She will cry and plead and tell you she loves you. But it will be a lie. It has always been a lie. Go back, Jacaerys. Go home. Save yourself."

—

You had been waiting for hours. You stood at the edge of the pool, your bare feet sinking into the damp sand, your eyes fixed on the curtain of falling water. The roar of the waterfall filled your ears until you could hear nothing else, but you were listening for something beneath the roar. A shout. A crash. The sound of stone breaking. The sound of a man drowning.

Anything. Please, anything.

Jace surfaced at the edge of the pool, gasping, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, his skin slick with water and gleaming in the sunlight. He pulled himself onto the sand, his chest heaving, his arms trembling with exhaustion, and for a moment he just knelt there on his hands and knees, catching his breath, water streaming from his body in rivulets. You just stared at him, searching his face for some sign of what had happened, some clue in the set of his jaw or the light in his eyes. Was the curse broken? Had he succeeded? Had he been the one, the only one, the man whose love was finally strong enough?

"I did it," he said, and his voice was warm and triumphant and full of a joy you had never heard from him before. "I broke the curse."

You stumbled forward, your legs barely supporting you, your hands reaching for him before your mind had fully registered what he had said. "You—you did? It is broken? I am free?"

"You are free." He rose to his feet, still smiling, and opened his arms to you. "You are free, Y/N. We can leave. Together. Just like I promised."

A sob tore from your throat, raw and jagged and utterly involuntary. You threw yourself into his arms, your body shaking, tears streaming down your face in hot, messy rivulets. He caught you and held you tight, his hands warm on your back, his lips pressing kisses to your hair, your temple, your cheek, his voice murmuring reassurances that you could barely hear over the pounding of your own heart.

"I love you," you gasped, the words tumbling out between sobs, unstoppable, irrepressible. "I love you, I love you, I love you—"

"I love you too." His voice was soft. Tender. Everything you had ever wanted to hear. "I told you I would save you. I told you I was different. I told you I was not like the others."

He kissed you, it was a deep kiss, a passionate kiss, the kind of kiss that spoke of relief and joy and a future finally within reach. You melted into him, your body pressing against his, your hands sliding up his chest, his shoulders, his neck, tangling in his wet hair. The waterfall roared behind you, but it sounded different now, less like a threat and more like applause. The sun was warm on your skin, warmer than it had ever been. You were free. You were finally, impossibly free. After centuries of solitude, centuries of hoping and losing and hoping again, someone had finally loved you enough.

You did not notice anything until you felt the cold metal snap shut against your skin, you tore away from him, stumbling backward, your hand flying to your wrist. Something was there. Something heavy and cold and horribly, sickeningly familiar. You looked down, and the world stopped.

A golden snake. Coiled around your forearm, its tail clamped in its own jaws, its scales gleaming in the sunlight with a wet, organic sheen. Its eyes were bright and watchful and alive. It was warm against your skin, warm like something that had a heartbeat, warm like something that was feeding.

Identical to the ones in the cave. Identical to the ones that had bound the statue for centuries, the statue that was supposed to be destroyed, the statue that he had told you he had broken.

But the statue was not destroyed. You knew that now with a cold, creeping certainty. He had not broken it. He had done something else. Something worse.

"What—" Your voice came out strangled, barely a whisper, the words catching in your throat like bones. "What is this?"

Jace was still standing by the water's edge. His smile was gone. His face had changed, shifted into something you did not recognize. The warmth in his eyes had drained away, replaced by something flat and cold and terribly, terribly calm. He looked at you the way a scholar might look at a pinned insect, curious and detached and utterly without feeling.

He raised his own arm.

The matching snake was coiled around his wrist. Twin to yours. Identical in every detail, from the curve of the scales to the glint of the golden eyes. Linked by nothing visible. Linked all the same. You could feel it, the connection between them, an invisible chain that stretched from your wrist to his and bound you together tighter than any iron ever could.

"I could not break the curse," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The voice of a man who had made a decision and was at peace with it. "The statue would not break. I struck it with the rock, and the rock shattered. I struck it with my fists, and my knuckles bled. I threw myself against it, and it did not even crack." He paused, his dark eyes fixed on yours, unblinking. "The voice, your brother, he told me the truth. He told me what you really are. He told me what you have done. He told me what you would do to me the moment you were free."

"No." You shook your head, backing away from him. Your wrist was burning where the snake touched your skin, a cold fire that spread up your arm and into your chest. "No, Jace, whatever he told you, it is a lie. It is always a lie. He is trying to trap you, he is trying to turn you against me—"

"Is it a lie?" He tilted his head, regarding you with that terrible calm. "He told me the curse made me love you. He told me you have been feeding on my devotion since the moment I opened my eyes. He told me you would leave me the instant you were free."

"That is not true!" You were screaming now, your voice raw and cracking. "I love you! I have never loved anyone the way I love you! You have to believe me!"

"Then why can I not remember my mother's name?" His voice cracked on the word mother, just slightly, and beneath the coldness you saw something flicker. Something wounded. Something that still hurt. "Why can I not remember my brothers' faces? Why did I wake up this morning and realize that I could not recall the sound of my father's voice, or the color of my brother's eyes, or the name of the dragon I rode into battle? You took everything from me. Everything I was. Everything I loved. You hollowed me out and filled me with yourself, and you expected me to believe it was love?"

"I did not mean to!" You were sobbing now, the tears hot and bitter on your cheeks. "I did not want to take your memories, i loved you so much i did not want you to leave me."

"You loved being loved." His voice was flat. Final. "There is a difference."

You stared at him. Your chest was heaving. Your wrist was throbbing, the golden snake pulsing against your skin like a second heartbeat. You could feel it now, the thing that bound you together. It was not just a chain. It was a tether. A leash.

"The statue forced you to have a physical body," Jace said, and his voice had shifted again, becoming almost conversational. Almost pleasant. "You are not mortal. You are not human something that was bound to this island and trapped in the stone. The chains kept you here. The statue kept you solid. Touchable. Real." He paused. "Without the statue, you would have no body. You would be nothing but mist and memory. Is that not what your brother wanted? To keep you contained? To keep you in a form that could touch and taste and take?"

You did not answer. You could not answer. Your throat had closed around the words.

"I could not break the curse," Jace said, and he took a step toward you, his bare feet silent on the sand. "I could not destroy the statue. But I could transfer it. I could take the chains off the stone and put them onto something else. Something living. Something that could carry them." He raised his arm again, showing you the snake coiled around his wrist, and his smile returned. It was not a kind smile. "You are not bound to the island anymore. You are bound to me."

The world tilted. The roar of the waterfall seemed to fade, replaced by a high, thin ringing in your ears. The sun was too bright. The sand was too soft. The golden snake was too warm against your skin.

"You—" Your voice would not work. "You did not—"

"I did." He was still calm. Still cold. Still looking at you with those eyes that used to be so full of love. "The voice told me it was the only way. The only way to make sure you could not leave me. The only way to make sure your love was real. The only way to be certain that when I woke up tomorrow, you would still be there, and the day after that, and the day after that."

"You trapped me."

He laughed. It was a soft laugh, a quiet laugh, but there was nothing warm in it. "I freed you. You can leave the island now. The chains that bound you to this rock are gone. You can walk onto a ship and sail away and see the world again. Is that not what you wanted? Is that not what you have been begging me for since the moment we met?"

"You bound me to you!"

"And you bound me to you first." His voice sharpened, the calm cracking for just a moment to reveal the fury underneath. "You made me love you. You made me forget my own mother's name. You drugged my food and whispered in my ear and wrapped yourself around my mind so tightly I could not tell where you ended and I began. You trapped me on this island long before I ever trapped you. The only difference is that my chains were made of kisses and lies, and yours are made of gold."

"I loved you!" The words tore from your throat, raw and ragged. "I loved you! Everything I did, I did because I loved you!"

"You made me forget my mother's name," he said again, and his voice was quieter now, almost sad. "Do you understand what that means? Do you understand what you took from me? She is out there somewhere, fighting a war, grieving a son she believes is dead, and I cannot remember her name. I cannot remember her face. I know I love her. I know I owe her everything. But when I try to picture her, there is nothing there. Just fog. Just you."

You opened your mouth, but no words came. What could you possibly say? What defense could you offer that would not sound hollow and selfish and monstrous?

"You stole my memories and drugged my food and lied to me for months," Jace continued, and now he was walking toward you, closing the distance between you with slow, deliberate steps. "You let me believe I was going home. You let me build a boat I was never going to finish. You let me dream of a future that did not exist. And when I found out the truth, when I confronted you in that cave full of dead men's armor, what did you do? Did you apologize? Did you offer to help me leave? No. You cried. You made yourself the victim. You told me how lonely you were, how sad you were, how much you had suffered. You made me comfort you. You made me feel guilty for discovering your lies."

He stopped in front of you, close enough that you could feel the heat of his body, close enough that you could see the pulse beating in his throat. "And I did feel guilty," he said. "I felt so guilty that I almost forgot what you had done. I almost let myself believe that you were the victim. That I was the one who had wronged you by wanting to go home. That is how good you are at this. That is how deep your hooks go."

"Please." Your voice was barely a whisper now. "Please, Jace, I am sorry. I am so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I only wanted to be loved. I only wanted—"

"I know what you wanted." He reached up and touched your face, his fingers gentle against your tear-streaked cheek. The gesture was almost tender. Almost loving. It made your skin crawl. "You wanted someone to stay. You wanted someone to choose you. And now someone has. I have chosen you. I have chosen you over my family, over my throne, over my memories, over everything I ever was. I have given up my entire life to be with you. Are you not happy? Is this not what you wanted?"

"You have made me your prisoner."

"I have made you my equal." His thumb traced the curve of your cheekbone, wiping away a tear. "We are connected now. Bound together. What happens to one of us happens to the other. If you leave, I will feel it. If you try to run, I will know. And if you try to hurt me—" He shrugged. "The snakes will not let you. They protect what they hold. That is what the voice told me."

"The voice. He told you to do this?"

"He gave me a choice. Break the statue, free you, and watch you leave me the moment we set foot on the mainland. Or bind you to me, keep you close, and never wonder again whether your love was real." His smile returned, and it was the saddest smile you had ever seen. "It was not a difficult choice. I love you. I cannot lose you. So I made sure I would never have to."

You stared at him. The man you loved. The man who had just destroyed you. The man who had looked at your chains and decided to put them on himself rather than break them, because he could not bear the thought of you walking free.

"This is not love," you whispered. "This is possession."

"Is there a difference?" He tilted his head, his dark eyes glittering. "You tell me. You have been doing this for centuries. You tell me where love ends and possession begins. You tell me whether what you felt for me was really love, or just the desperate hunger of a lonely creature who needed someone, anyone, to fill the void. You tell me whether I am any different from you, or whether I am just the first man who was willing to sink to your level."

You opened your mouth. Closed it. The words would not come.

"Exactly," Jace said. "You cannot tell me. Because you do not know either. Because you have been confusing love and hunger for so long that you cannot tell them apart anymore. And now I am the same. You have made me the same." He leaned closer, his lips brushing your ear. "We are equals now. Partners. Two monsters bound together for eternity. Is that not romantic? Is that not what you always wanted? Someone who would never leave you, never abandon you, never choose anything over you?"

"You are insane," you breathed.

"I am what you made me." He pulled back and looked into your eyes, and his expression was unreadable. "You wanted me to stay. I am staying. You wanted me to love you. I love you. You wanted me to be different from the others. I am different. I am the one who did not run. I am the one who looked at the chains and chose to wear them. I am the one who gave up everything to be with you." He cupped your face in both hands, gentle and terrible and utterly inescapable. "Why are you not happy? If you really loved me, you would be happy. This is what you wanted. This is what you have been asking for since the moment we met. Someone who would stay. Someone who would choose you. Someone who would never leave."

He kissed your forehead, and his lips were warm, and the golden snake pulsed against your wrist like a second heart.

"I am going to build us a boat," he said. "A real one this time. One that can carry us both back to Westeros. And you are going to meet my mother, and I am going to take back my throne, and you are going to be my queen. Just like I promised. Just like we planned. The only difference is that now I know you will not leave me. Now I know your love is real. Because it has to be. Because you have no choice." He pulled back and smiled, and his smile was beautiful and broken and utterly terrifying. "You are free now, Y/N. Free from the island. Free from your brother's curse. Free from the statue and the chains and the centuries of solitude. You can go anywhere you want. You can do anything you want. The whole world is open to you." He took your hand, the one with the golden snake coiled around the wrist, and pressed it to his chest, over his heart. "As long as you never leave my side."

You looked down at the snake. At his hand holding yours. At the invisible chain that stretched between you, unbreakable and eternal.

"You are a monster," you whispered.

Jace smiled. "Now you know how it feels."

[iressasmailbox]

What do you think of doing stories of spooning pregnant sex with the Targaryen royals x reader ( akotsk) . I don’t know how you will feel about that but I loved your last series where the reader was naked . If not just something with them and a pregnant reader in any situation.

Pregnant Sex with Akotsk Targ Men

honestly i love anything regarding pregnancy, i think it’s so cute and also smexy. THANK YOU FOR WAITING!! patience is so much appreciated. my summer classes just started and im having a rough time, but being able to write makes me feel way better. enough yap, i hope you enjoy

hcs of aerion, baelor, daeron, maekar, valarr

mdni 18+

Aerion - You were four months gone. Your belly had finally popped, small but it was definitely there, a firm little swell beneath your nightgown. And you were absolutely going feral.

It felt like weeks since Aerion had touched you, but in reality it was only a few days. Not because he was cruel, not this time. You just assumed he'd gotten what he wanted. An heir. A dragon in the womb. Why would he keep fucking you now that the deed was done?

So you suffered in silence. Tossing and turning. Pressing your thighs together. Biting your lip while he slept beside you, oblivious.

Tonight, you couldn't take it anymore.

You were on your side, facing away from him, your back pressed to his chest. He was asleep, or so you thought. His arm was draped over your waist, his palm resting on the curve of your belly.

You rolled your hips back. Just a little. Just enough to feel him. A little wouldn’t hurt, right?

He was hard.

You froze. Your face burned.

"Thought you were asleep," you whispered.

"I was." His voice was rough, groggy. "Until you started grinding on me like a cat in heat."

Your whole body went hot. "I wasn't-"

"You were." His hand slid down from your belly to your hip, gripping it. "You've been doing this for weeks. Tossing and turning. Making those little sounds." His lips brushed your ear. "Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

You swallowed. "I thought you didn't want-"

"I always want." He pushed your nightgown up to your waist and pushed your smallclothes down. His cock, already hard, slid between your thighs from behind. "I've been waiting for you to ask. Didn’t wanna make you uncomfortable.”

"I didn't know how."

He bit your shoulder. Not hard. Just enough to make you gasp.

"You're carrying my child," he said. "You don't have to ask. You just have to spread your legs."

He pushed inside you. Slow. Careful. Different from before, no more brutal, frantic fucking. He moved like he was afraid of hurting you, of hurting the baby.

"Faster," you begged.

"No."

"Please-"

"You're pregnant. I'm not going to fuck you like a whore."

You whined. He laughed. But this was no laughing matter.

"Desperate little thing," he murmured. "All those hormones making you needy."

He sped up. Just a little. His hand slid around your waist, fingers finding your clit, rubbing in slow circles.

"You're so wet," he said. "So fucking wet. Is this all for me?"

"All for you."

He fucked you like that, slow and deep, his chest pressed to your back, his hand on your belly. When you came, you bit your lip to keep from screaming. He came a moment later, spilling inside you, his groan muffled against your neck.

"Next time," he said, still catching his breath, "speak up."

Baelor - The feast was your idea. Baelor had been putting it off for weeks, afraid of overwhelming you, afraid of the noise, the crowds, the endless parade of lords and ladies wanting to congratulate him on the heir you were carrying. It made him so nervous with you being surrounded by so many people, while you were pregnant with his child. But you were feeling good now. The morning sickness had faded for now. Your belly was round and firm, and you had that glow people talked about. So you told him it was fine. You wanted to celebrate.

Now you were standing in the great hall, your hand resting on your stomach, surrounded by well wishers, along with many, many guards. Baelor watched you from across the room. He had been watching you all night.

You laughed at something a lady said. You accepted a cup of water from a servant. You turned, your gaze finding his across the crowd, and you smiled.

His chest ached. Anything you did had him struck.

You were beautiful. You always were but it’s different like this, you’re radiant, glowing, carrying his child. Every time you touched your belly, his cock twitched. Every time you laughed, he wanted to drag you out of the hall.

He crossed the room. Took your hand. Pressed a kiss to your knuckles.

"Is everything alright, my love?" you asked.

"Fine." His voice was rough. "I need you."

Your eyes widened. "Now?"

"Now."

You didn't argue. You let him lead you out of the hall, down the corridor, to your chambers. The door had barely closed before he was on you.

"Baelor-"

"I've been watching you all night." He pushed your gown off your shoulders, baring your breasts. "Touching your belly. Smiling at everyone." His mouth found your neck. "Do you know what that does to me?"

"Tell me."

"Makes me want to fuck you."

You gasped as he lifted you onto the bed, laying you on your side, your belly propped on a pillow. He shed his tunic, his breeches, and climbed in behind you, his chest pressing to your back.

"You're so beautiful," he said, pushing your gown up to your waist. "Carrying my child. Glowing."

His cock pressed against your entrance. You pushed back, trying to take him inside, but he held your hip still.

"A-ah-"

"Shh." His hand slid around your waist, fingers finding your clit. "Let me take care of you."

He pushed inside you slowly. Inch by inch. You both groaned.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You're so good. So warm."

He moved slow. Deep. His hand never left your clit, rubbing in time with his thrusts. His other hand splayed across your belly, feeling the curve of it beneath his palm.

"I'm so proud of you," he murmured against your ear. "So proud."

You turned your head, just enough to kiss him. He kissed you back reverently.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you too."

He sped up. His hips slapped against yours, the bed creaking beneath you. You came undone around him, crying out, and he followed a moment later, spilling inside you with a groan.

"We should have feasts more often, if it gets to end like this" you said.

He kissed your shoulder and held you tighter. "Any night will end like this, just ask me."

Daeron - Daeron hadn't touched a drop of wine since the day you told him you were pregnant. EVERYONE cannot believe it, genuinely. Not because anyone asked him to. Not because he made some grand declaration. He just stopped. One day, after you first shared the news, he was excited, reaching for his cup, and he looked at you, at the way you smiled at him like he wasn't a complete disaster and he put the cup down.

He never picked it back up.

But he needed something. An outlet. Without the wine, he was restless. Fidgety. He followed you around the castle like a lost puppy, showing up in your solar, your chambers, the gardens. He held your hand at meals. He pressed his face into your hair when you were reading. He was everywhere.

You didn't mind. You'd rather have him drunk off you anyway.

Tonight, you were in bed. Your belly was round at five months, and you were lying on your side, facing away from him, because it was the only way to get comfortable. Daeron was behind you, his chest pressed to your back, his arm draped over your waist. His hand rested on your belly, palm flat, fingers spread.

He was painfully hard.

You could feel him, his cock pressing against your backside, thick and insistent. He wasn't trying to hide it. He wasn't grinding on you either. Just... existing. Letting you feel what you did to him.

"Daeron," you said.

"Mm?"

"You're hard."

"I know."

"Are you going to do something about it?"

He was quiet for a moment. His thumb traced circles on your belly.

"I wasn't sure if you'd want me to."

You turned your head, just enough to see his face. His violet eyes were dark, earnest, a little desperate.

"I always want you to. And the maesters said I should be fine.”

He exhaled shakily and relieved, pushing your nightgown up to your waist.

"I've been thinking about this all day," he admitted, his hand sliding down your hip. "Watching you. The way you move now. The way you touch your belly."

You reached back, gripping his thigh, pulling him closer. "Then stop thinking and do it."

He pushed inside you slowly. Careful. His forehead dropped to the back of your neck, and he groaned.

"You feel so good," he breathed. "So fucking good."

He moved slow at first. Deep. His hand found your clit, rubbing in time with his thrusts, and you arched your back, pressing into him.

"Faster," you demanded.

"You're pregnant-"

"I'm not made of glass, Daeron. Fuck me. Please.”

He laughed breathlessly and sped up. His hips slapped against yours, the bed creaking beneath you. His hand never left your clit.

You came first, clenching around him, your face buried in the pillow. He followed a moment later, spilling inside you with a groan, his body shaking against yours.

He kissed your shoulder. "I'm going to be a good father."

"You already are."

"I'm going to be sober. For them. For you."

Your heart fluttered and you reached back and threaded your fingers through his hair. "I know."

Maekar - You were close. So close. The maesters said any day now, and Maekar was losing his mind.

He had always been stern, prickly, quick to snap. But this was different. This was constant. He yelled at the servants for not scrubbing the floors hard enough. He yelled at the maesters for not washing their hands thoroughly enough. He hovered in your chambers, pacing, his hand never leaving his sword hilt.

"For fuck's sake," he snarled at a passing servant who looked at you wrong. "Get the fuck out of her sight."

The servant fled.

You bit back a smile.

"Stop laughing," he said.

"I'm not laughing."

"You're thinking about laughing."

You reached out and took his hand. He was tense, his fingers rigid, his knuckles white.

"You need to relax," you said.

"I'll relax when the baby is here and you're not in danger."

"That's weeks away."

"Fucking-" He stopped. Pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know."

You tugged on his hand, pulling him toward the bed. He followed, because he always followed, even when he was being difficult.

"Lie down," you said.

"I'm not tired."

"I didn't ask if you were tired. Lie down."

He glared at you. You glared back. He did as you asked.

You climbed on top of him, straddling his hips, your round belly pressing against his stomach. His hands came up automatically, settling on your waist.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Calming you down."

"This isn't calming."

Total lie, and his cock was already hard. You could feel it pressing against your thigh through his breeches. His breath hitched when you rolled your hips.

"Maekar."

"What."

"Kiss me."

He did. His hand fisted in your hair, pulling you down, and he kissed you hard. Desperate. Like he was trying to pour all his fear and frustration and want into the shape of his mouth against yours.

When he pulled back, his eyes were dark.

"We need to change positions," he said.

"Why?"

"Because you're going to hurt yourself."

"I'm not-"

"I'm not taking that risk."

He sat up slowly, his hands on your waist, guiding you. He kissed you again carefully, so carefully, turned you both until you were lying on your side, facing away from him. Your belly rested on a pillow. His chest pressed to your back.

"Better," he murmured.

"You're ridiculous."

"You're pregnant."

He pushed your nightgown up to your waist. His cock, still hard, pressed against your entrance.

"Tell me if it hurts," he said.

"It won't."

"Tell me anyway."

He pushed inside you slowly. Inch by inch. You both groaned.

"Fuck," he breathed. "You feel so good."

He moved slow. Deep. His hand slid around your waist, fingers finding your clit, rubbing in time with his thrusts. His other hand splayed across your belly, feeling the curve of it beneath his palm.

"I love you," he said. "I'm going to be a wreck until this baby comes out."

"I know."

"I'm going to yell at everyone."

"I know."

"I'm going to yell at the baby."

"You're not going to yell at the baby."

He laughed, finally. His hips stuttered, and he buried his face in your neck.

"Just stay here," he said. "Don't move. Don't leave."

"I'm not going anywhere."

He fucked you like that, slow and deep, his body curled around yours until you came undone around him, clenching, crying out. He followed a moment later, spilling inside you with a groan, his face buried in your hair.

"The maesters need to be cleaner," he mumbled. Still lodged inside you.

"I know."

"I'm going to write a decree. Mandatory hand-washing. Before and after every birth."

"That's a good idea."

He kissed your shoulder. "I'm terrified."

"Imagine how I feel."

"But I'm also happy."

You turned your head, just enough to see his face. His purple eyes were soft, vulnerable, nothing like the stern prince everyone else saw. It WILL be okay.

Valarr - You were seven months pregnant, and you were miserable.

Your back ached. Your feet were swollen. You couldn't sleep, couldn't get comfortable, couldn't even roll over without feeling like a beached whale. The baby kicked your ribs constantly, and you were pretty sure your hips were going to split in half.

Valarr did everything he could. He massaged your lower back every night, his thumbs working the knots out of your muscles. He brought you water, tea, whatever you craved. He helped you in and out of the bath, washing your hair, scrubbing your back, even though the maids could have done it. He wanted to do it. He insisted.

He also made you eat better. More greens, more protein, less of the sugary nonsense you kept trying to sneak past him. "For the baby," he said. "And for you." You rolled your eyes but ate the vegetables.

Tonight, you were lying on your side, facing away from him, your belly propped on a pillow. You felt huge. Grotesque. Your hips were wider, your thighs thicker, and there were stretch marks creeping across your belly that made you want to cry.

Valarr's hand landed on your hip.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I'm tired."

"Something else."

You didn't answer. His hand slid from your hip to your belly, palm flat, fingers spread.

"You've been avoiding my touch," he said.

"I have not."

"You have. Every time I try to hold you, you shift away." He pressed a kiss to your shoulder. "Talk to me."

You swallowed. Your throat was tight.

"I feel disgusting," you whispered.

His hand stilled. "What?"

"Look at me. I'm huge. I have stretch marks. I can't even see my feet. How could you possibly-" You stopped. Your voice broke.

Valarr sat up. Gently, carefully, he turned you onto your back. He knelt beside you, his mismatched eyes soft, his jaw set.

"Can I show you something?" he asked.

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

He pushed your nightgown up to your ribs. Your belly was round and taut, marked with faint silver lines. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the curve of it.

"I love this," he said.

"You have to say that."

"I don't have to say anything." He kissed your belly again. Then your hip. Then the soft swell of your thigh. "I love the way your body has changed. I love knowing that you're carrying our child."

He kissed a stretch mark. Then another. His lips traced the silver lines, soft and reverent.

"You're not disgusting," he said. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

You were crying now. Quiet tears sliding down your cheeks. He kissed them away.

"Can I touch you?" he asked.

"Yes."

He laid you back on your side, settled behind you, and pushed your nightgown up to your waist. Pulling your smallclothes down, and his hand slid between your thighs. You were already wet, embarrassingly so but you craved this, and he groaned against your neck.

"You're so responsive," he murmured. "So ready."

"I've been needing you," you admitted. "I just didn't know how to ask."

"You don't have to ask. You just have to let me in."

He pushed inside you slowly. Carefully. You both groaned.

"Oh," you breathed. "Oh, that's-"

"Good?"

"So good."

He moved slow. Deep. His hand found your clit, rubbing in slow circles, and you arched your back, pressing into him.

"You're so beautiful like this," he said. "Carrying my child. Letting me love you."

You came undone around him, crying out, your body clenching. He followed a moment later, spilling inside you with a groan, his face buried in your hair.

He didn't pull out. Just stayed there, holding you, his hand on your belly.

"I love you, you’re doing so well.” he said.

"I love you too."

He kissed your shoulder. "You're not allowed to feel disgusting anymore."

And he is absolutely right.

[sansaorgana]

Please Baelor x Wife!Reader and reader is always horny/needy because she's pregnant 🙏🥲

Hi! 😊 I only write one shots for the young Princes but I turned this request into headcanons for all of them.

To be honest, I quite liked this shorter form and I liked including Maekar and Baelor although I've never written for them before and I'm insecure if I've written them well.

So, if anyone is down for more headcanons like this for all the Princes, feel free to send asks. 💖💖💖

CONTAINS: Aerion, Baelor, Daeron, Maekar, Valarr

TW: I didn't put the +18 label on it because there is no actual smut but be careful if you avoid such themes.

💖 AERION 💖

At first he's confused, then he realises what causes your sudden neediness and he gets smug. He did this to you and it is his little dragon growing in your womb, of course you're needy for your wonderful husband.

Aerion is happy with that turn of events however he can't miss an opportunity to simply tease you with slightly degrading but playful comments about you acting like a wanton whore and never giving him a moment of rest because of your selfish desire.

He also teases you with the absence of what you crave the most. He refuses to touch you and lay with you as he comes up with stupid excuses just to see you get even more needy and whiny. He wants to hear you whimper and beg like a little kitten. It gives him pleasure to see you so vulnerable for him. And then he gives in and the night is long because he gives you exactly what you were asking for – over and over until you're both out of breath.

💖 BAELOR 💖

Baelor is surprised at first but amused. He chuckles and tries to be always there when you need him. He's older than you but an excellent warrior, therefore he can easily handle your desire physically.

But he sadly lacks enough time to give you. He's an heir to the throne and his father's Hand, so he has many important duties. So, sometimes, when you arrive at his office with your little smirk, he sighs. But he can't say no to you, even though he sometimes tries to talk you out of it because he has other responsibilities.

All it takes is to remind him that you are his most important responsibility. When you pout and say that you feel neglected and so does the little babe, he gives in with a chuckle. He'd tease you about being insatiable and dramatic but there's no degradation in it. He doesn't even bother with taking you to your shared chambers, he's willing to spoil you on top of his desk.

💖 DAERON 💖

He doesn't even realise something's changed at first. You two have always been very active when it comes to martial duties. You'd spend whole days in bed, tangled in each other's limbs. He doesn't mind doing that even more often.

He only notices that, in fact, you're even more needy than usual when he begins to feel sore himself. When you initiate the next round, he has to decline because of the overstimulation but he always finds a way to please you in different ways because he doesn't want to leave you unattended. His mouth and fingers are happy to help.

You become his pillow princess, nearly bedridden from desire and yet Daeron wouldn't dare to complain. He constantly feels like a shit husband and he's scared of being a shit father as well, so the least he can do is to fulfill all your needs and desires.

💖 MAEKAR 💖

That man is done. When he sees you walk up to him with that smirk of yours, he sighs and rolls his eyes and turns around to walk away. Not that he can't keep up physically or that he's as busy as his brother but it's just the way he is... grumpy.

But you never give up. All your pleading and pouting and teasing eventually pays off. He might be stubborn but he loves you dearly and he actually spoils you with whatever you want. He just has to put on a show of being the strict one in the beginning. After that he's all yours.

Even though he's usually pretty dominant, during your exceptionally needy pregnancy he likes to just lay down and watch you take him as you pleasure yourself on top of him. His little brat (you) gets what she wants from him as she smirks. It's a sight he adores more than anything else even though he wouldn't admit it.

💖 VALARR 💖

Valarr is scared and confused at first. He thinks something is wrong and shyly asks the Maester about it. When he finds out it's perfectly normal for a woman to turn into a pervert during her pregnancy, he breaths with relief.

However, now he feels burdened with one more responsibility – keeping you satisfied. He has so many duties already but he treats this one as seriously as the others. When you need him, he's dropping everything else to rush to your side. Everyone thinks you're sick or something because what are they supposed to think when there's your handmaden approaching Valarr a few times a day to tell him that his Lady Wife requires his presence and he gets pale before practically running to you? They suspect the pregnancy is being particularly difficult for you.

He's very gentle with you because he's terrified of hurting the baby or overstimulating you, especially when you're extremely sensitive now. He asks a million questions throughout the whole thing, making sure you and the baby are alright, which sometimes can kill the mood and you have to shut him up with a kiss.

MASTERLIST

[faeaabi]

HEATWAVES

nagi seishiro x reader | fluff | non-sexual intimacy near the end | #2 of my 2026 summer event | wc: 949

aabi's note: guys i just picked random images that fit this blue lock summer-y vibe cuz it was taking me too long to find images that go together

˗ˏˋ synopsis: the heat is overwhelming, but nagi can't stop clinging on to you ♡.ᐟ

it was excruciatingly hot.

the moment you stepped outside, you'd melt from the heat. that's how hot it was. even inside your house, where you had access to air conditioning, you couldn't escape the heat.

and there was one more thing you couldn't escape—nagi.

"sei, can you get off me. it's hot."

"noo 'm comfy."

"seishiro can we please cuddle later."

"five more minutes.."

"nagi seishiro. if you don't get off me, i'm going to push you off."

"okay, okay. 'm sorry baby."

because of the heatwaves, you were staying indoors basically everyday, and nagi was taking advantage of that. being the handsy man he was, he'd always find a way to have his limbs on yours. with you in his vicinity, nagi had plenty of more opportunities to have your bodies tangled.

all your attempts to avoid the physical touch was useless.

you'd move to the couch, and somehow, nagi ended up beside you, his cheek pressed against your chest. when you scooted to the opposite end, nagi lazily shuffled over until his head was on your lap.

when you stood up to get a cool, refreshing drink from the fridge, without fail, you heard the familiar sound of slow footsteps dragging across the floor behind you.

"sei..."

"hmm?"

"why are you following me?"

" 'cause you left."

"i'm getting a drink."

"yeah."

"you can wait in the living room."

"nah."

it was basically impossible to avoid and deny him. you grumbled, opening the fridge as a wave of cold air brushed against your face. you sighed at the feeling. it felt way better than nagi hugging you when both your bodies were sweaty and sticky.

as soon as you reached inside the fridge, you felt two hands wrap around your waist and nagi resting his chin on top of your head.

"you're making me hotter," you muttered, pouring yourself a glass of ice cold water.

"am i?" nagi asked, pretending to be oblivious. it was quite obvious that the physical contact was a bad idea because nagi himself was burning up and his cheeks were faintly pink.

you didn't respond and nagi murmured a halfhearted "sorry." he stepped away, releasing his grasp from yours, only for three full seconds. he was quick to wrap an arm around your waist again.

"dude," you scoffed, glancing at his arm then up at him.

"what?" nagi blinked innocently. "this is different."

you scoffed again. what was this clingy bastard even trying to prove? when you asked nagi how it was different, he replied with ," 'cause now i'm only using one arm."

at night, everything was worst.

you expected it to be cooler, but no, it was still burning hot. and it was humid too, making your situation a million times worst. you would toss and turn until you fell asleep if it weren't for nagi.

he was trapping you in his grasp, arms and legs wrapped around your frame like you're his personal pillow. nagi was also fast asleep while you were suffering from him and the heat.

"seii," you whine and tried to push his body off you for the nth time.

"mm," he sleepily responded, only tightening his grasp. for someone who looked half-asleep twenty-five eight, he had a surprisingly firm grip.

you let out an exhausted groan, trying to pry one of his arms off your waist. "it's so hot and you're doing all of this."

"well i'm melting too," nagi mumbled. "we're gonna melt together."

with another dramatic sigh, you gave up, letting your head fall back onto the pillow. despite the ridiculous temperature, despite the humidity, despite the fact that the air conditioner sounded like it was fighting for its life, nagi still insisted on staying as close to you as physically possible.

eventually, you reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the spare portable fan. this will help, you think. you're immediately proven wrong when the fan pushed only hot breeze into your face.

just as you were about to complain again, you're suddenly lifted off the bed by nagi. he doesn't explain anything as he drags you into the bathroom, dropping you onto the sink counter as soon as the door shut behind you both.

"what the heck are you doing sei?" you slipped off the counter.

"i have an idea."

within seconds, both of your thin pieces of clothing were discarded onto the tiled bathroom floor and you were both in the bathtub. you leaned back, resting the weight of your head on nagi's bare chest, who was sitting comfortably behind you, as ice cold water filled the tub.

both of you instantly relaxed at the feeling of the cold water against your bodies.

"feel good?" nagi whispered before letting out a yawn. he was already falling asleep in the bathtub.

"uh huh." you nodded. "feels so good."

nagi grabbed your hand, intertwining your fingers and squeezing it.

"it's cold," he murmured. "but you're warm. perfect combo."

before nagi could fall asleep in the bathtub, you dragged him and yourself out of the bathroom, not even bothering to properly dry your wet bodies or damp hair. as soon as your back hit the mattress, you were already regretting not staying in the cold water longer, missing the relishing feeling.

"i hate this", you grumbled to yourself, watching nagi doze off immediately right after his eyes shut. he was unconscious while you were feeling hot all over again despite just exiting the tub. at least he wasn't bear hugging you again.

late at night, way past a regular human being's sleep time, do you almost fall asleep. except nagi ends up putting his foot on yours at that exact time.

"ugh seishiro!"

© faeaabi 2026 do NOT: plagiarize, copy, translate, upload my work elsewhere + train ai with my work.

[riintone]

ME X YOU！ft. nagi seishiro

IN WHICH﹕nagi was watching cute cat videos in the middle of the night as he was unable to sleep, as he suddenly saw two cats cuddling—a fluffy white maine coon and a cute ragdoll cat. seeing them, he had the urge to reach over and wake you up next to him to show you the two cats, saying that “it’s us.”

established relationship. pure fluff. gn!reader. reader is a bit grumpy at first being woken up. nagi being nagi.

“mmph..” nagi’s small hums filled the air, his earbuds tucked into his ears as to carefully not wake you—his partner, whom he held with one arm thrown lazily over your waist—using your shoulder to prop his phone against. for once, he didn’t feel tired. he didn’t want to sleep. but you did, after a long day full of stress.

the ceiling fan buzzed as cold air left its tips, a comfortable contrast to the warmth of the blanket haphazardly covering the two. his phone created a barely-there glow over his face, causing his lidded eyes to shimmer under the light. the overall atmosphere in the room was cozy.

however—despite how soft and sweet this moment may seem—nagi was bored and had nothing to do. he had done all of his dailies on the games he frequents, there were no new events, nothing to save up for, and there was somehow nothing interesting to watch on any streaming apps. the night quickly became a bore as he endlessly scrolled through his recommended on youtube, on the verge of opening the addictive allure of tiktok to scroll until the sun came up.

just as he was about to close the app, a thumbnail caught his eye. it was a video from years ago that had only recently grown in popularity, with two adorable cats cuddling on the thumbnail. as lazy as a cat himself, of course he loved the little critters. and so, he clicked on the video.

it was only around sixteen seconds, short and sweet. small purrs flowed into his ears, and he recognized the cats by their breeds. a ragdoll and maine coon. he couldn’t help but see the two of you in them, all cuddly and lazily affectionate with one another.

he had the silly urge to wake you up and show you the video, rather than just sending it to you through discord and leaving it for you to watch later. was it stupid to wake you up in the middle of the night? absolutely. did he think about the stupidity of it? not even once.

“angel, wake up..” he murmured, his voice oddly softer than usual. he rolled one leg over yours, full-on clinging as he rubbed his head against your neck in an attempt to grab your attention. “wanna show you this.” he prodded, hearing your sleepy groans as you drifted between dreamland and the real world.

“sei.. mmgh, what the hell—” “look.” the low light of his phone being showcased in front of you left you blinking, attempting to adjust your eyes from the darkness to his screen. squinting, you made out two cuddly cats. normally, you would swoon over such a cute scene.

however, it was currently 2:44a.m. and you were on the verge of hitting him upside the head for waking you up. rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, you stared up at him. not his phone, which he is very clearly trying to make you look at despite the several failed attempts.

“what..? did i do something?” you almost wanted to laugh at how innocent he sounded. as if he didn’t just wake you up in the middle of the night so he could show you a video of two cats. gods, you loved this man. that’s why you asked for forgiveness for what you were about to do.

snatching his phone out of his hand, you threw it haphazardly onto the nightstand and rolled onto him. it was safe to say he was a little puzzled. not shocked, no. just staring at you without a single thought behind those blank eyes of his. it was awkward and silent for the next minute before you finally spoke up, voice full of rasp from sleep and eyes half open,

“i love you. but go the fuck to sleep before i banish you to the couch.” there was an audible gulp. another awkward minute of silence. luckily, the man was smart enough to wrap his arms around you and place a kiss on the crown of your head. and then stupid was back not even two seconds later.

“you forgot to throw my earbuds with my phone—” “nagi.” “yep. knew it as i said it. good night.”

　૮(ྀི∩˃ ˕ ˂∩)ྀིა　　ㅤㅤwant to be tagged in more content like this？then please consider joining my taglist！hi im alive and i finally finished this after a year chat

ᥫ᭡　　ㅤㅤ @angelhqlo1111 @lucreied @alexiaray @axresphiii @estrnrea @nanawsq @whoknows1127 @elliehenry24 @hllharu @lulumi1u @foz-eya @yumyumcherryy @kissacide @szhify @rink1sser @t3chn0chan @vxesori @jujuandherjuvinile @elliehenry24 @starlit-novella @yummycutiew @ji9star0w0 @magpieka @lcckedheart.

[qintten]

sylus x reader fluff, suggestive? not really wc. 313

"Sy, you can see other people's desires, right?"

"Mm. Something like that."

Sylus mumbles a reply as he lounges in the sofa next to you, flipping his book. With a huff, you climb on his lap and make yourself comfortable, ignoring the fact that you're now obstructing his view. He lets you encroach his space as he huffs out a soft laugh himself.

"So, like..." You start, feeling shy all of a sudden. "If there's something I wanna try.... in the bedroom..." That finally gets his full attention. He closes his book and raises a brow at you, urging you to continue.

Your bottom lip juts out in a pout, annoyed that he's making you say it. "You know... if... there's something I wanna try... you'd be able to read my mind?"

"We've had sex multiple times, kitten. You're still shy about it?" He teases.

"Sylus!" You smack his chest in retaliation. He rolls his eyes. "Just answer the question, please."

Sylus takes your hand on his chest and brings it to his lips. "Yes, sweetie. I can." He chuckles when you perk up, before he continues, "But for you, I won't."

"What? Why not?!"

"Because," he kisses your cheek, "if there's something you truly want from me," then your forehead, "I would much rather hear you ask for it."

"O-oh. I just... wh- don't laugh, you jerk!"

"I'm not." He wraps you in his arms for a hug, clearly stifling a giggle on your neck. "You just look..." Then, he pulls away to look at you with a content sigh. "Adorable."

You don't even know what face you're making but you can't find yourself to care, not when Sylus looks at you like you're his most beloved treasure (and you are). Your eyes dart away, feeling butterflies in your stomach, even as you continue to pout at him.

"Whatever. Not gonna tell you."

"Don't be like that, kitten. I want to know."

"Too bad!"

"Not even a hint?"

"N- hey, don't tickle me! Sylus, that's cheating!"

[1ix1n]

nagi sucks at holding umbrellas, but he's perfect at holding you!

the moody afternoon sky finally gave up, unleashing a heavy downpour that trapped you under the school’s narrow concrete awning. you sighed, dreading the long wait, when a familiar, sluggish figure shuffled into view. nagi was practically sleepwalking, but he held a giant black umbrella.

"yo, nagi!" you called out. "can i share? i kinda forgot mine…"

he stopped, blinking his sleepy gray eyes. "ugh... sharing is a hassle," he murmured, his voice a lazy drawl. "fine, but i'm holding it. if you do, you'll walk too fast. it's a bother. "

"yay!" you exclaimed, quickly stepping under the massive canopy.

it was fine for about thirty seconds. then, nagi’s phone vibrated. he pulled it out, immediately getting sucked into a game. because of his towering height, his wrist tilted lazily as he tapped. a sudden gust of wind sent a splash of freezing rainwater onto your shoulder.

"nagi!" you nudged him. "you’re tilting it. i'm getting soaked!"

"mmn? sorry..." he mumbled, not looking up. he straightened his hand, but the moment his character jumped, his wrist drifted again. another cold spray hit your cheek.

"nagi, i'm literally freezing!" you whined, shivering slightly.

"ah, this is annoying," nagi sighed, finally pocketing the phone. he looked down at you, his expression blank but slightly slumped. "you’re standing too far away. that's why you're getting wet."

before you could protest his terrible umbrella skills, nagi’s free arm reached out. with an effortless tug, he pulled you flush against his side. his heavy arm draped over your shoulder, tucking you instantly to his gentle warmth. 

"there," nagi mumbled, resting his chin comfortably on top of your head. pressed beside him, you instantly stopped shivering. "now you fit perfectly. just stay close. walking in this dumb rain is already way too much of a pain."

꒰ ♫ ꒱ whisking to ⸝⸝ love, maybe by SECRET NUMBER – but if i turn around, it's all you. i guess it's love, maybe?

© 1ix1n 2026 ⸝⸝ pls do not copy or feed my work into ai, ty .ᐟ 

[1ix1n]

lazy hours with nagi seishiro (っ- ‸ - ς) ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁

the apartment just smelled like rain and whatever candle was burning on the counter. outside, the sky was a completely washed-out gray, making the couch feel like the only warm spot left on earth.

nagi moved, burying his face deeper into the giant knitted blanket until only his eyes were showing. he didn't say anything, just let out a long, heavy sigh before slumping sideways, dumping his entire head onto your shoulder. his white hair was a total mess, tickling your neck every time he breathed.

"nagi, your phone's gonna slip," you whispered, looking down at the screen sliding off his knee.

"mnn, let it," he mumbled, his voice totally muffled by the wool. "don't care. my hands are freezing anyway."

he didn’t even ask, just slipped his fingers right into yours. his hand was a little cold against yours, but he held on tight anyway, giving you a slow, warm squeeze and completely melting into the couch the second you squeezed back.

you shifted a bit so he could get more comfortable against your side, reaching over with your free hand to grab a piece of candy from the bowl on the coffee table.

hearing the wrapper crinkle, he peeked one eye open, looking up at you sleepily. "feed me?"

you popped it into his mouth. he chewed slowly, letting out a soft, happy hum that you could feel right against your shoulder.

the living room was getting darker, that soft, blue evening light settling over everything. there were no unread texts to worry about, no soccer practice to run to—just completely empty, quiet time. even the chores could wait.

"this is the best," nagi muttered, his voice dropping into a heavy, relaxed yawn. he nuzzled a little closer, burying his face right into the crook of your neck to hide from the remaining light. "hmm... don't move."

"i'm right here," you sigh, resting your chin on his messy white hair.

outside, the rain just kept tapping softly against the glass, but tangled up under the heavy blanket like this, you were the only part of the world he cared about.

© 1ix1n 2026 ⸝⸝ pls do not copy or feed my work into ai, ty .ᐟ

[yourlovesae]

you were seated on the couch, sipping on your tea when you heard it. the announcer announcing the final score of japenese U-20 vs. spain.

1-2.

sae itoshi lost.

and it wasn’t even an painful loss. the game was extremely close with each member of the team giving it their all, making powerful crosses across the pitch like it was nothing.

except sae didn’t take it that way.

bunny iglesias had made a complete fool of him. scoring the last and final goal between sae’s very own legs in the last 12 seconds of the game.

that very moment led sae to question if his reading of the game was.. wrong. if he had missed some super important detail in the game that would’ve prevented bunny from making the goal.

but damn if bunny wasn’t hard to read. every move he made wasn’t dictated by the plays of others. he moved freely across the field, taking every motion through the pitch in a free and flawless manner that sae just.. couldn’t keep up with.

and it was about to gnaw at him for the rest of the day.

the minute your roommate sae itoshi stepped into your shared apartment, he dropped his duffel bag on the floor, slipped off his shoes, and made his way to the couch.

there were still beads of sweat rolling down sae’s face as his magenta bangs clung to his forehead. he didn’t even acknowledge your presence when he picked up the remote to watch his own highlights.

i mean, whenever he came home he would give you a slight nod of acknowledgment and maybe even a hum in response to your routinely ‘hey’, but this time was different.

it was like he was focused on one thing and one thing only.

watching bunny’s highlight over, and over, and over again.

and you sat right there with him, for some odd reason, i guess you just wanted to see just how many times sae would watch his own failure. you even made a bet in your head.

this was kinda normal for sae. normal being that you’d come out of your room at four am looking for a quick bite to satisfy your hunger and he’d be right there, on the couch, slightly hunched over with his elbows rested on his knees with that look on his face.

but this was different. it was like he was searching for something, anything that would give him an answer to that horrendous play he made on the pitch.

then you broke the silence.

“i don’t know much about football, but i think you played well.” your voice was quiet save for the cheering on the tv.

that broke sae out of whatever trance he was in.

his face was painted with something like disbelief and disgust.

much like sae.

he was now facing you with an unreadable look in his eyes. sure, you could read sae’s facial expression with ease since most of the time it was blank. but his eyes told a different story.

“i know you don’t, because you wouldn’t have said that if you did.” he scoffed.

you took this as an offer. “then.. why don’t you teach me?”

he quirked an eyebrow at this. “you want to know more about football?” his tone was slightly doubtful that you of all people would willingly want to hear him go on and on about the logistics of football.

“i just want to know what’s got you like this, i’ve never seen this sae, it’s kinda cute.” your confession has him scoffing.

“cute? me losing to a lukewarm shit-head is cute to you?”

to this, a wry chuckle slips past your lips. “no! no,” you raise your hands and shake them in defense, “it’s just.. i don’t know how to explain it.”

he rolled his eyes and sighed, “whatever..”

a pause.

“i’ll teach you though, if you really want to learn.” his face was facing away from you and he said it so quietly that you almost missed it.

almost.

you perked up at this, eyes gleaming with interest. “really?”

he hummed in affirmation.

“give me you hand.” he said it with such a straight face that you almost thought that it wasn’t a request.

even so, you obliged, holding your hand out for him.

he slid is right hand under yours, his left hand’s pointer finger coming to rest in the palm of your hand.

his eyes met yours, there was determination mixed with.. something else. “i won’t teach you everything, i’ll just show you the play he made. good?”

you nod. “you’ll teach me some more later though right?”

“don’t push it.”

before you could start to push again, you felt sae’s index finger move lightly against your palm. the touch was barley there, but you still felt it. a tingly sensation.

“pretend the goal is here,” he slid his finger down to the base of your hand.

“and i’m here,” he then slides his finger toward the base of your thumb.

sae’s eyes are obviously facing downward into the palm of your hand, envisioning the play as he’d watched it before. but your attention was elsewhere.

not glued to your own hand, but glued to his face.

god did he look pretty when he was focusing on something.

and that something was you.

or a part of you, at least.

he seemed so intent on teaching you the play that he’d lost himself in the process. forgetting that this was the first time you two had ever made physical contact with one another.

“pay attention.” he quickly snapped you out of your thoughts. not even looking up to tell to you.

a slight pout formed on your lips. “i am..”

a lie.

he continued. “bunny is a forward, i’m a midfielder. i tried going for the penalty box here, but somehow after i threaded a perfect weighted through-ball, that idiot struck a goal, right here.”

and just then sae came to the realization that it wasn’t him who had let bunny scored, it was an idiot teammate who couldn’t accept such a well thought through pass.

he let go of your hand and you internally winced at the loss warmth.

sae on the other hand seemed cool. after calculating everything in his head and connecting what he had just shown you to the footage of the highlight, he was content in his understanding now.

and he’d be lying if he said the softness of your hand didn’t help come to his conclusion.