#Nor will he ever be ghost king | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bi-writes · 1 month ago

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an eye for an eye | knight!ghost x f!reader

your husband bends to your will. men must learn from difficult lessons how far that bending goes.

type: a continuation of a hand for a hand, but can be read stand-alone (11.6k)

cw: 1600s au, dark!ghost, reader described as curvier/plus-sized, graphic depictions of war + violence, possessive!ghost, war-criminal!ghost, inaccurate historical settings probably, unprotected piv, cumplay, breeding kink, size kink, simon "i'd do anything for my wife no matter the devasting consequences" riley (18+)

Your husband has an insatiable appetite. Such a big man he is; he towers over you, so much so that you must tip your head back always to look up at him. You had to make many arrangements in your house to accommodate his hunger–a pantry stocked full of eggs and less fabric for your skirts.

Your house isn’t like others. Neither you nor Ghost have ever lived in luxury. When he showed you your home for the first time, you had shaken your head–you didn’t believe that such a large place was supposed to be yours, and even now, sometimes you feel like a stranger, out of place when the maids ask you what you want for supper or where you’d like to take your afternoon tea. You don’t like the fuss, the asking, the women that curtsy when you come near, concentrated over the creases in your skirts or the loose thread of your sleeve or the wispy hairs that fall out of your braids. You are told all the time that you must behave like a duchess, that you must poise yourself with your new title and your new money, and you must do the things that duchesses do–but no one says the same to your husband.

He is still allowed to sleep in the barracks. Lick the blood off his gauntlets. Polish his sword in the dirt. He’s still allowed to be everything that you cannot be anymore, he still lives the life he had before.

He still kills; and he is still very, very good at it.

Your queen told you in a letter that the king is very pleased. Ever since your union, Ghost has been quite the conqueror. Bloodthirsty and very determined, your husband has been taking his men across the water. He is not any less impressive off land. Not even the pirates have tried to negotiate; they bend the knee or taste the salt water. You breathe shakily when you read your queen’s letters—her praise for your husband’s conquests, how blessed your family will be and how valuable you are to the crown, how grateful she is that Ghost is no longer a fiend in court but rather a little more polite and a little quieter.

All for your sake. Ghost’s name is now your own, and he refuses to embarrass you now that you have it.

You won’t lie; the bodies that Ghost has stacked since you’ve been wed do not scare you. He’s doing it for you. He has never said it out loud, never told you so, but you know it. He wants to show you what kind man that he is, what kind of soldier—you know he’s trying to prove himself worthy. If he killed a thousand men to have you, how many will he slaughter to keep you?

He sends you letters of his own. Not many, but he does send letters, and while Ghost seems to be ineloquent and entirely too brutish, he has quite the voice when he writes.

To my wife,

The sun falls quicker here. I’d like to come home. Tell me of your day, and I will tell you of mine. There were a fleet of ships that came to meet us at dawn. When we sank three, they begged for us to spare the rest.

I have you to think about now. So I burned them.

Simon

A poet, your beloved.

He signs his real name in his letters. Your eyes skim over most of it–you don’t even blink when he tells you what he does to them. Sometimes he writes in great detail about the screams of a hundred souls, the way burning flesh smells, the taste of dirt in a new place when you know it is finally yours. He doesn’t like having secrets. He tells you all his thoughts, even if they might scare you, because you are his wife, and he has discovered quite quickly that you have been cut from the same cloth.

Even when he is home, and he tells you these things all over again, he can’t help the way his cock hardens when you merely blink and ask him if he has added any scars to his collection.

Ravenous, naughty little duchess, and you are all his. He knows he picked well–he knows, he knows he wasn’t wrong when he saw you across the throne room hiding behind his queen, he knows now that he was right about what he saw in your eyes.

You do hate when he’s away. You’re not used to the maids helping you dress, and you secretly abhor the help. That is why when you hear the shuffle of your house early in the morning, your heart thuds in your chest knowing he’s home.

The staff get antsy when Simon is around. He is very good at keeping an estate for someone that has never had to or ever been taught to, but he leaves the responsibilities with you and only you every time he goes. He doesn’t trust anyone else to do it, and every time he comes back, he makes you sit on one big thigh as he teaches you something new that you need to remember for when he goes away. He demands much of those he employs, and they are eager to please him. Whether it is because they respect him or are afraid of him, you aren’t sure.

Perhaps it’s both.

You sit up as the bedroom door opens. You smile, big and wide and sleepy as he steps into the room. He shuts the door with his boot, slipping his hood off, and you sigh as he grips the clasp of his mask and unhooks it. He tosses it onto the floor, bare-faced, and as he makes his way towards the bed, he sheds the rest of his clothes until he’s completely naked.

You cannot stop yourself from the shaky breath you take. He is all muscle and fat, strong and entirely too scary, but it’s hard to focus on what he really is when he stands before you like this. He has fat thighs, big shoulders, carved muscle of intense labor around his middle and along his biceps. He has large hands with calloused palms and split knuckles, and your eyes meet his own as he comes closer. He’s so gorgeous, even with a face like that. He has a long scar that stretches from one brow to his lower jaw, another that cuts his nose and splits his lip, but those eyes are dark and lovely, and you can’t help the warmth that comes over you when he catches you staring at him, closer, right to his cock that hangs heavy between his legs.

Just as he begins to lower himself onto the bed, you hold out a hand, giggling.

“Simon, if you think you are getting into this bed without a proper bath, you’re mistaken!” You laugh, and he raises a brow.

“Mmm…” He smacks his lips together. “Tha’ right, my lady?” He clicks his tongue. “This is my bed. ’s oll mine. Every blanket…every pillow…” He grips your ankle from under the covers and yanks you towards him. “And every part of you.”

You giggle again, shaking your head, “Please, Simon!” You push him away with your toes. “They only changed the sheets yesterday. You’ll dirty them…” You flutter your lashes. “Will you bathe if I join you?”

He grins wide, licking over his teeth.

“Can’t refuse an offer like tha’.”

You hold out your hand for him, and he takes it gently. You watch as he brings your knuckles towards his mouth, and you bite back a smile when he decides to kiss each one, slow. He tugs finally, pulling you up, and you wrap your arms around his neck as he hoists you up into his arms. You would worry about your weight normally, but Simon holds you so easily, barely even a grunt as he wraps your legs around his middle. You don’t waste another second, cupping his cheeks in your hands and kissing him softly.

It’s never just a kiss with Simon. He slides one of his hands up your back, into your hair, and you whine as he tips your head back just enough to slip his tongue into your mouth. Simon doesn’t just kiss, he consumes. What he did to get back to you, the things he endured, the places he has seen and the bodies he has buried and burned and scattered across the places he now calls country, it’s always to get back to this place.

To you.

“How’s my boy?” He asks when you pull away. He carries you to another room, to where the tub sits, and he rings a bell by the door to call the maids in. You snatch a robe off a hook and cover him with it as he sits with you, but all he does is put a few fingers under your chin and make you look at him again. “Oi. Asked ya question, luv.”

Your lip wobbles a little, and you look away.

“I…” You wait until the maids have gone to fetch hot water to tell him. “I bled while you were gone. I…” You smooth your hands over the robe, distracting yourself. “I’m…I’m sorry, Simon.”

You close your eyes as he leans close, resting his forehead against yours, and you shake a little as he lets out a warm breath against your lips. He moves a warm hand over your soft stomach, cupping you there, and you lean your head back a little at the tender touch.

“It will happen,” he says finally, and your mouth opens to respond, but he sticks his thumb between your lips to shut you up. He doesn’t want to hear you blame yourself. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his, for not being here with you, for not be able to take care of you. You give in, suckling on the salt of him, and he grits his teeth as he watches you. “I know. Seen it in m’dreams.”

Simon has dreams. Lots of dreams, but he tells you that they are not dreams, they are glimpses into something that has already happened. When you asked if he was some kind of seer, the kind that the king used to have at parties, Simon doesn’t laugh.

He says the dreams are why he knows he won’t die. Why he is never afraid, because he knows somewhere behind his eyes what’s to come even if he didn’t see the entire painting of it. It is why he knew he would marry you; it is why he paid you so much attention, why he knew he would win his battles, why he always knows whose blood it is in his mouth because he has tasted their death before and relishes in the knowing of it all, in the certainty.

It’s never I think, it is always I know, and Simon is nothing if he is not the most honest man that you know.

So if he says you will have his babe, it is as good as truth. As green as the grass grows beneath his feet, as blue as his sky, and as red as the blood that is caked underneath his nails.

When the tub is filled with water, you let Simon sink into it first. You kneel beside it, picking up a glass of oil, pouring it into your palms before sinking your hands into his hair. It’s gotten longer since he left, in need of a cut, but you smile when he leans his head back into your shoulder. You can feel his content as he relaxes into you, and you admire his physique as you use the warm water and scrub the mud and grime off of him.

“I missed you, husband,” you whisper, and he only lets you massage his hair for a few more moments before he grips you by the wrist and tugs you forward, right into the bath. “Simon!” you laugh, “my night dress—oh!—it’s ruined!”

“Too far away,” he mutters, practically ripping the silk off of you as he tosses it besides the bath. “Mmm…” He cups your breasts with two big hands, smoothing his thumbs over your nipples, and you whine a little as he pulls at them just enough to make them stiffen. “Y’should be naked when I come home,” he says lowly. “I’ll soil y’r bloody gown next time, m’lady.”

You giggle, and he smiles. A real smile. As real as he’ll ever give anyone, maybe the only one that anyone has ever even seen. He has never shown his face in court, and while it angers the women and irks the men, you revel in the fact that all of this is only for you.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

You kiss him softly. The water sloshes, warm and inviting, and sometimes you forget your life used to be anything but joy. A year ago, you would not believe that you would be here, titled, wealthy, in a stone room lit by candles bathing with a blood hungry ghost.

A year ago, you trembled whenever he looked at you. You cowered when you heard his footsteps. What a stupid little girl you had been. What a fool. She had no idea what she could have, the kinds of things she could hold in her hand.

Real power wasn’t being able to command a room with your words. Real power was being able to say anything and have it be believed as truth. Real power was making someone look in one direction and have them see what you see, even if what you see isn’t real.

He lays you down in your bed afterward and eats. Your wet hair soaks the sheets, but you can’t seem to be really bothered as he fits your legs over his shoulders and bends you at the waist, his mouth suctioned to your clit as he eats you slowly. One of his hands is spread out over your tummy, the other you can hear making a squelch as he fists his own cock. It’s slow and methodical, and he slides his tongue between your folds firm, catching what dribbles from you on the tip of his tongue before he swallows it and leans in for more.

He has eaten you in nearly every room in your house. Frightened the cooks tossing you onto the dining table, given a servant a scare as he ducked under your skirts in the library, had the gardeners fleeing as he dropped you onto the grass near the lake and disappeared with a frenzy to eat your cunt during sunrise. It’s maddening, the kind of need that Simon requires, but it’s hard to refuse when you feel so warm and bubbly and happy after he’s finished. A pampered princess you are, never lifting a finger, only awake long enough when he’s home to eat until you’re full and cum until you fall asleep again.

Maybe that’s why you’re not pregnant yet. Simon likes to be here, between your thighs, mouth fixed on your wet pussy until he’s practically exhausted himself with a sore jaw and lax tongue.

He kisses you sloppy after. Licking into your mouth, practically spitting onto your tongue, wanting you to taste—tastes so good, luvvie, don’t ya see, yeah?—wanting you to know why he’s so eager to be on his knees all the time.

You sniffle, a little dizzy, shaking your head.

“’s not what I really want,” is all you whimper, and he nods, because he knows, he always knows.

“I know, luv. I know wot ya really need.”

“I must be broken,” you sob, cradling his face in your hands, and he shakes his head.

“Not broken,” Simon assures you. He speaks so surely that it’s hard not to believe him. “It wasn’t time.”

“You can’t see the future, Simon! You don’t know!” You cry, and he snarls a little, shaking his head again.

“You listen t’me,” he growls. You shake a little as he grabs your face with one hand, fixing your jaw under his grip as he holds onto you firmly. “Wot I say goes. Y’r my wife, so listen t’me, and listen t’me good. Y’r not broken. Not time. Say it back t’me.”

Your lip trembles, and he rattles your head a little.

“Say it,” he snaps, and you hiccup.

“It’s not time,” you whisper, and he plants a fat kiss onto your tear-soaked lips.

“Just need my cock, luv,” he murmurs. “Tha’s oll. Just need me t’fuck it outta ya.”

You nod, pressing your face to his, and he tuts, reaching down and spreading your legs wide to accommodate him between them as he lays over you.

“’s oll y’need,” he repeats, and you nod again.

You have to take another bath in the same morning; and this time, you weren’t able to walk there.

You like when Simon is home because it’s quiet. The only one that dotes on you here is Simon. The maids do not dress you or do your hair or moisturize your skin. It’s always Simon.

You smile at him in the mirror as you sit at your vanity. He has a brush in one hand, and he’s using it delicately to detangle your hair how you like. His hands are practiced and gentle, and when he finishes, he leans over you as he starts to part your hair to braid it. He did not have sisters, but his mother had him always do her hair after she lost the use of her hands with age. You don’t know where his mother is, but you assume she is not here anymore, because he never invites you to meet her.

He oils your skin. He slips the robe off of you, revealing your damp skin from the bath, and he slathers oil in his hands before using it to soften your skin. He takes his time, smoothing those big hands over your shoulders, down your back, along your arms. You tilt your head back when he warms your breasts, squeezing and fondling your tits. He murmurs in your ear the entire time, and he has to fuck you with his fingers to quiet you when he stops because just his hands on your tits has you wet all over again.

He dresses you, too. Helps you slip into your undergarments, fastens the cage for your skirts over your hips. He ties them skillfully, and after he layers your skirts over the farthingale, he gets you into your corset. It’s intimate as he does this. Even with your wide skirt, he comes closer, over your shoulder, and he tugs at the laces at your back, pulling it tight with firm grunts. You sigh when he buries his face into the crook of your neck, his hand skimming over your breasts as they sit nice and perky between stiff fabric and whalebone.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck, unnerving…the way ya look…”

You close your eyes, “S-Simon, please…I’m already dressed…”

He chuckles, “I know. I know.”

But when he has to leave again, you nearly come with him. You fasten his armor for him, help him slip each piece of leather on and click every piece of metal into place. You tie his cloak and slip his mask on, and you try and duck your head when you flip his hood up, but he catches you, tilting your chin up.

He huffs when he sees your face. Tears sliding down your cheeks, lips wet with them, eyes all glassy and red. He draws you up onto your toes, pressing his mouth to yours through the mask, and you hold onto him tightly, digging your nails into his chest armor and threatening to not let go.

“I want to go.“

“No.”

“Simon, let me go,” You gasp, begging, gripping his hood in firm fists and not caring that his armor is cutting into your front. “Let me go with you, I can’t do this anymore, I want to go, I can do it.”

You aren’t sure if Simon underestimates you. You think it’s more that he does not want you to see him in a place where he is most true. Where he wears the least of a disguise. He does not know he wears it the least with you, and that you have already seen his blood and how it curdles under his skin. You like it that way. You like him angry…and mean…and terrible. You like him when his sword is dirty and his armor needs polishing and his mind thinks of nothing else besides war. He should know this by now. He should know that you see him and see what he is even more than his king, more than his men.

He couldn’t scare you, even if he tried.

“War is not where women go,” Simon snaps. His tone is harsh, even for you, and you stiffen when he grips you by the jaw and rattles your head a little. “Especially not one like you, my love. War would eat ya, eat ya fuckin’ whole. Look at ya…” He huffs, deep, sliding that gloved hand down your throat to slip it beneath the neckline of your dress and fondle your breast with a firm grip. “Beautiful. Meant for my lips…for these dresses…meant to be held in my hands, not bleed from stray arrows, because tha’ is surely the least of wot they would do t’ya if they knew ya were my wife. Now ya will wipe these tears, ‘n see me off, and then ya will come back inside like a good girl, ‘n you will wait for me here until I come back.”

Your bottom lip trembles, and you scowl up at him. Not indifference, but frustration, and Simon doesn’t think it suits you.

“I’m sick of waiting for you, Simon,” you spit. “It’s all I ever do, wait. Wait for you to come back, alive or dead, I never know. And don’t say you do this for country, that is a lie.” You shove him backwards, but he barely budges when your hands touch his chest, a rigid wall that does not give. “You do it because you like it. You’re a bloodthirsty dog, and all you do is bend to our king’s will.”

A lie, but you tell it anyways, because you want something, and he will not give it to you.

“That is my duty.”

“Your duty is to me,” you snap. “Kings come and go, but I will not.” Simon stills. He glares down at you from behind his mask, and perhaps this might terrify his men, but that you are not. You are his wife, and you are protected by that title alone. The only man to ever lay a hand on you would not live to see another second, himself included. “Now you will let me join you, or so help me God, Simon, I will not be here when you return.”

You do not expect the full-bellied laugh that leaves him. His armor shakes with him, and you grind your teeth, narrowing your eyes. He uses his thumb to force his mask up, and then he cups the back of your head and draws you in for a sloppy kiss. You resist at first, but when he feeds you his tongue, you melt. You kiss him back, letting him draw you closer, and you sigh as he tangles his fingers into your hair and cradles you with those big hands.

There is nothing more to say. Simon neither confirms nor denies, but you taste it in his mouth, his devotion. Not wrong, not right, but just so–he has many responsibilities, but you are the only one that will remain the same. One day, his king will die, and he will serve another, but the space you have made beside him will never change. Even when you die, because he knows you will go before him, there will never be someone else to fill it. You and you only, the woman he found and made his, the one he demanded lest he kill his own country for it, it will always be you. Soft and sweet, you are, but the Lord knew Simon could only have one woman, and he made it be you; the one spitfire enough to defy her own king because she trusted his love enough for it.

Would you commit treason to save his life? Would you watch a king die if it meant your beloved lived?

Would he?

He thinks about what you have said when he takes his fleet across the water. He runs his tongue over his teeth behind his mask, breathing deep when he thinks about your proclamations of duty. Of change. Of what remains when other things move, of the kind of life that waits for him when he comes and goes with a king’s order. He thinks about how easily he is taken away from you, and he knows there is truth in what you feel. It is not really Simon that sacrifices, it is what he leaves behind, and that is you.

It’s never angered him before. He had accepted the fact, as early as your wedding day, that he would leave and come back, then leave again. It has always been the way of his life, come desire or not, so it bothers him that of all the things that surprised him in his life, it would be missing someone that shocked him the most.

Missing his wife. Missing the serene perfection of one woman, and the perfect place between her soft thighs. Every day that he finds himself between them is the best day of his life, he reckons, so now he feels bitter about staring at a freezing ocean amongst his men because he will go weeks without her.

Her. Her. Her.

He is bitter, yes, until he is not.

It comes in a letter from a messenger on horseback. They have been stationed in a foreign land for weeks now, watching slowly as the stone walls of a castle at their front crumples day after day from the stones filled with powder that ignite what is wood and break what is rock. The letter is sealed with wax, with the motif of a snake. It is given directly to Simon, whose name is scribbled in the letter, and when he reads it, he tastes ichor and smoke.

So the great phantom has come to seal my fate. I am not in the business of letting what is mine be taken. Even if you have brought your all, it won’t be taken from me.

I heard you have a beautiful new wife. I heard you paid for her in blood.

I shall do the same. I will hang your sword above our marriage bed.

Ghost is not someone that bends to the threats from foe he cannot look in the eye. Words are so empty. It is nothing like when he stands just a few meters apart from them, eyes fixed against one another, as they decide whether today they want to live or they want to die. The letter means nothing, but he’s surprised by the heat that bubbles under his ribs at the mention of his bride. He meant it when he said you were not meant for war, and that meant in this regard, too–nobody was allowed to talk about you, not like this, not ever.

When his king orders him home, Ghost crumples the note and tosses it into embers. He watches it burn, and then he orders his men to set to flame the ground around the stone walls.

So men like him can be goaded, it seems. His resolve is not as strong as he thought.

The weeks make you anxious. All you do is sit and collect dues and tell the maids which dress you want to wear and which you do not. It is peaceful and boring, and you wish Simon was here to make your days more exciting, but he is not.

His letters are the only things that keep you occupied, truly. He writes to you about war and loneliness, and you write to him about the mundane of domesticity and the ache he leaves behind. Sometimes, his letters come folded with pressed flowers he finds along the way, and you start to collect them, putting them away in small boxes or using them as bookmarks as you go through Simon’s library.

He has many books. His most loved books are those of war, of history, and you smooth your fingers over the pages he has dogeared and find comfort in reading the same words that he once did. You learn, as well. While in your studies as a girl, they made you learn arithmetic and the flowery bits of history and art, here in Simon’s house, you learn of strategy and weaponry and military tactic. Sometimes you disagree, and you write about these disagreements to Simon, and he writes back, pleased with your observations. He told you once that if you were a man, he would want you in that tent with him, beside him, deciding on which formations to take and when to strike. You responded saying that you could be that for him anyway. What did your sex have anything to do with whether you were right or wrong?

Simon agreed.

But I would never invite you here, dear wife. You have to understand that.

When your queen asks for your audience for dinner, you oblige easily; finally, you have something to do rather than add up numbers or sign a document on Simon’s behalf or read another fucking book.

You don’t want to wear all the costume your maids insist on, but you appease them after they repeatedly explain to you what your title means. With a drawn face, you let them tie your corset and layer your skirts, and you watch in the mirror as they braid your hair and drape large, obnoxious jewels over you. You grimace at the tiara they fit into your hair, and your elderly handmaid pinches your cheeks and tells you to put on a fair countenance, Your Grace, lest you make the Duke look ungrateful.

You bite your tongue from snapping at her. She should know that Simon would say nothing about your countenance; all he would do is fix whatever was bothering you until you smiled again.

You arrive early enough to have tea. Your queen is so excited to see you; she gushes when you meet her in the throne room, pulling you up from your curtsy so she can hug you tight, squealing. When you try to address her with a curt “Your Majesty,” she shakes her head, pressing her hands to your cheeks and giggling, “No need for formalities now. Call me Victoria.”

You hide your displeasure with a small smile. Now that you are no longer her lady-in-waiting, she allows you her name. Is it because she sees you more as equals, or because now you’re allowed to be somewhat of friends?

You must be some kind of friend. She sizes you up like you are one. She wears England’s colors this afternoon. A fire red dress adorned with gold accents, a dragon pin holding her shawl. She wears magnificent red and gold jewelry, but she’s looking at your dress, and you can see the slight twitch of her eye. You are wearing French lace, and she doesn’t like it. Or maybe she doesn’t like the color, the accents of navy blue and silver that you wear.

The skull motif that is woven into your tiara and printed on your coat and sewn into your dress. Does it insult her? That all your life, you wore nothing but browns and beiges and grays, were invisible to her, and now you represent your house, visit her as your guest, and bear an honorable name?

You were no one when you served her. Just a girl, no close family, no friends, just a distant uncle who gave you to the crown that hoped you could be of service. That was to be your duty for all your life–to serve the king’s wife until she wanted you no more or until she was gone. To cater to her every need and every wish, no matter the time of day or night.

Now you sit across her, more noble. Refined. Wearing a dress she despises, perhaps because she likes it more than her own.

Over tea, she gossips about the other ladies she has visit. You’ve heard this before, but you’ve never been included in the conversation. She talks to you, and she wants to hear your opinion, and you find yourself uneasy as you try to think of what to say. She is your queen, and you want her to like you. When you worked for her, you earned her favor by always warming up her jewels before she put them on, by making sure she had her tea ready in the morning at her bedside, by always holding the fan she so loved for when she inevitably had a hot flash. Now, as her friend, you weren’t exactly sure what to do. You suck in a soft breath and look at her, and then you purse your lips.

You think it best to agree with her. To be on her side. You might not be her direct servant any longer, but you still must fall under her favor. A queen’s favor can be just as powerful, especially if she occasionally has the ear of her husband.

“Well, that’s not very kind of her,” you say finally, and she laughs.

“No! She’s such a prude. I think her husband doesn’t sleep in her bed enough, if you know what I mean,” she winks at you. You giggle at that. “Speaking of husbands–” She pops another cake in her mouth. “How is yours?”

You reach up and tug at your necklace a bit, smiling nervously.

“Oh, uh…” You clear your throat, “He’s doing very well. I hear his latest campaign is quite the success. His majesty is very smart, heading for the east that way, I’m sure they will be victorious soon enough.”

Victoria smiles at the thought of her husband. His intelligence. She always used to talk to you about how many hours he worked, how she hated when he was away, how she wished he was home more so he could give her a son because she was so, so lonely.

“Wise words from the duchess, aye, my love?”

You jump a bit at the low voice from behind, and when you turn, you gasp, immediately standing and falling into a delicate curtsy. John Price waves his hand, coming further into the room, shaking his head.

“It’s alright,” he tells you. “Please, sit. You’re here as my guest.”

You stand and lift your head, trying to relax. You take a seat, smiling nervously, and Victoria smiles giddily at her husband. When he bends to kiss her cheek, she fawns, reaching for his hand and squeezing it before taking another piece of tart and eating it. John hums before motioning for one of the staff to fill your cup again with tea. He eyes you curiously, taking in your appearance. You sit up at that, performatively brushing off over the skull pattern on your corset. John runs his tongue over his teeth, smoothing a big palm down his wife’s long coils of hair.

“Since you’re here, I’d like a word, if that’s alright,” John says to you. His tone carries a little more authority now, and Victoria sighs, whining a little.

“John, please, she’s my friend. Can’t it wait–”

“That wasn’t a question, Victoria,” John bites. Her face falls a little. She swallows and tucks her hands into her lap. You’re reminded as you look at the slight wobble of her lip that there is no one truly above John Price, not even her. You keep your face neutral, but if you were invisible, you’d pity her.

What a shame her husband sees her as less than. How embarrassing. Your Simon would never. Your Simon waits until you finish speaking before speaking himself. Your husband kneels to take off your shoes, your husband tears your skirts to get a taste of you, your husband used his teeth to sever a man’s throat just to have your hand.

What did John Price do to get his wife? Who did John Price kill to have her hand? How many bruises did he earn around his knees on their wedding night from eating her out? As many as Simon, whose knees were black and blue by morning?

No, you suppose not. How unfortunate. How pathetic.

Victoria picks up her skirt and stands, pasting a big smile on her face. It doesn’t reach her eyes, and you can see the way her hands shake a little as she scurries off. She scowls as soon as she turns away from John, clearly annoyed.

“I’ll go check on dinner,” she says, but it is soft and unenthusiastic.

When she goes, the room falls quiet. At the nod of John’s head, the staff leave, and you keep still in your seat as John sits across from you, picking up one of the cakes in front of him and breaking off a piece to busy himself. He keeps his eyes on his task of cutting up the cake in small pieces, focused on his hands and how they work. You watch him carefully, steeling yourself.

You anticipate a conversation between man and woman, not a king and his lesser.

“Simon’s been away for some time. I bet that’s difficult for you.”

You straighten your posture, realizing what this conversation will be. By his tone, John seems to think you a bored, stupid housewife, perhaps. Uneducated. A woman, no thoughts in her head. You let your face relax, and you fold your hands in your lap. Maybe now is the time John should learn who you are and who you are not.

What you have become and what you no longer are.

“I do just fine, Your Majesty,” you say finally. You pick up a spoon and drop a cube of sugar into your tea, and you stir, picking it up to take a long sip. John is curious by your content. You have a quick tongue. “I could say the same to you, couldn’t I?”

John laughs. He narrows his eyes a bit at your clever response, taking a large bite of the cake and running a cloth over his beard. His eyes sparkle a little.

“So you know.”

“Know what, Your Majesty?”

“You know I gave Simon orders. And you know he didn’t listen to me.”

You purse your lips, but he sees the shine in your eyes. The lack of surprise. His face twitches a bit, and you shake your head. You blink slow, and it irks him to see you so calm. He is your king, and Simon answers to him, and you are his wife, so you must answer, too.

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“I could have your husband’s head cut off for treason for that, you’re aware, aren’t you?”

You tilt your head to the side. What an odd thing for John to say. What an odd thing for John to contemplate, since it would never come to pass. “Don’t be daft, my king. You wouldn’t want to do that.”

John slams his fist on the table, making the plates and cups rattle with his frustration, but you do not even flinch. You blink, stone-faced, and it makes his nostrils flare. He recognizes that glare, he knows it well. He has seen it before, stared it down many times in rooms just like this. Only now, he is not fighting for land, he fights for control of the one man that he has always been able to rely on. Simon has followed him into battles outnumbered by a thousand men, and only now he ignores an order? Only now he chooses something different?

“Now, let’s be civil, Your Majesty,” you say softly. You smile at him, leaning your head in your hand. “Is there something that you need from me? I have a feeling you might have encouraged this dinner just so you could see me in passing, so why don’t you just ask me what you wanted to ask me?”

John lets out a deep breath, leaning his elbows on the table, lowering his voice. He leans towards you, and you admire how blue his eyes are. John is quite a handsome king, but he does not captivate you. It has been a long time since John has tasted blood, and he lacks the edge that you crave dearly.

“I need him back here, is what I need,” John murmurs.

“My king, I couldn’t get him back here any more than you could, even if I wanted to.”

“Now who’s being daft?”

You scoff, leaning back in your chair. John is not a stupid man. He created a beast of a man, and he is trying not to poke it too hard. You shift, brushing down your skirts, and you let out a low breath.

“Why did he refuse?” You ask finally.

“What?”

“Why does he ignore your order to come back?” You ask again. “I can’t think of a lot of reasons why he would stay. So why did he ignore you?”

John clicks his tongue, smoothing a few of his fingers over his beard. He averts his eyes, looking out the tall windows, frowning a little at the grim weather. The weather is always grim here, but it irks him at the moment, makes him scowl a little harder.

“I was…informed that there was some sort of letter,” John explains. “Some threat.”

“I don’t follow. He gets lots of threats. And terrible letters.”

“Was about you this time, Your Grace.”

You close your eyes at that, shaking your head. Simon would never be so foolish as to be baited by baseless threats. He barely bats an eye when someone even in front of him draws his sword. He is so comforted by his ability to win, by his dreams and his visions that have not yet happened.

“That’s absurd,” you breathe. “Simon wouldn’t…”

John chuckles, but there is no humor there. “Wouldn’t he?”

“I still don’t understand what you expect me to do,” you roll your eyes, looking away. “Simon is…he’s not…he doesn’t listen. It’s why he’s good at this, isn’t it? He doesn’t really take orders, he’s…I…”

John has never complained before about the way Simon chooses to lead. Oftentimes, it is an order ignored that has made it so that he delivered another crown at John’s feet. Simon asks for forgiveness, not permission, and John has barely batted at eye at it. He sees Simon as some kind of distant son, but this refusal bothers him so?

John leans forward. “You need to understand something here, Simon is a rabid dog,” he spits. “And sometimes I let him off his lead, but this isn’t like anything I’ve had to deal with. I need you to call him back here.” He scoots closer. “England needs you to call him back here. To me.”

You narrow your eyes a little. England needs you to call him back? What kind of sick sense of patriotism is he trying to instill in you? John is stupider than he looks, to think a woman like you would show loyalty to country. You are loyal to your husband, and nothing else, because what has king and country ever really done for a woman like you except for dispose of you?

You wear Simon’s colors, not John’s, and you will wear them to your deathbed.

“If I do this for you, my king, then you owe me,” you whisper. He laughs again, no humor, and he picks up a goblet and fills it to the brim with wine. He drinks half before slamming it down onto the table, spilling it over his hand.

“Kings do not owe their subjects.”

“Quite right, Your Majesty,” you agree, picking up your napkin and dropping it onto the table. You stand, giving him a polite curtsy. “But I am not doing this as your subject.”

“Everything you do is as my subject.”

“You put your entire right to the throne on the back of one man,” you say softly. You are not accusing him, you’re reminding him of a truth. “Simon is why…he’s why your counsel still listens to you. He’s why your people are free from famine, why…why your taxes get paid on time, why your kingdom is still standing, no thanks to your father who wasted this place’s fortune on women and liquor.” You shake your head. “You have an eye for conquest, Your Majesty, but you lack the execution of any plan you conjure.”

You are not wrong, and John knows this, and it’s why he hasn’t spoken up yet or interrupted you. The man before, his own father, was a drunkard who spent all their money. He drank himself into the grave, and the only reason John stands before you now is because of Simon. A man who he fought beside, who he commanded, who once John’s duty became reality took up the mantle and finished what his father never could.

John would be in the next history book you read because of Simon, and it’s Simon’s name that will never be written. They do not bestow legacy to men who serve other men.

“Where…Where did you learn to speak to men this way?” John scoffs. “I am your king.”

You must have hit a soft spot. John is defensive now, and men only deflect and insult when they are cornered with the truth. They don’t like being held in front of a mirror.

“You are king because my husband made it so,” you correct him gently. “And Simon is a loyal dog, and that is good for your sake, because if he had any desire for your seat, it would be his.” You come closer, your heels sounding, and John glares down at you; but you glare right back because you are protected by your name and what you can do with it. John knows this, and it angers him, but he seems to have difficulty facing the truths of his own making. “But he is not your dog anymore. He’s mine.”

Your pen on paper is aggressive. You can tell because the splotches of ink are deep, bleeding black sinking into white as you put angry word to parchment. Not even a fortnight later, you are playing cards with Victoria, and you see Simon’s silhouette standing in the doorway, hood shadowing his masked face as he observes. When you look over your shoulder where John sits, and you meet his eyes, he looks away from you with a grim understanding.

Simon answers your call. Always.

At dinner, John is in better spirits. He drinks with a big smile, eats more than one plate, and he picks Victoria up by the waist to make her dance with him when he asks for the music to be played louder. Simon sits, fidgety, gloved hands moving in and out of fists as he watches you cut into your food and eat it with a blank face. He huffs beside you, his armor stiffening as he sits up straight, and you let your fork clatter onto your plate as you turn to glare at him.

“You were thinking with your cock, Simon,” you spit. “That is how men like you get killed.”

“You ‘ave no idea how men like me get killed because there are no men like me,” Simon growls. You roll your eyes, standing, and he grips your wrist angrily, tugging you close until you fall into his lap. You sigh, shaking your head, putting your hands on his broad shoulders and making him look at you.

“Maybe,” you whisper. “But I’m not wrong. It is how you’ll lose. You know better than that, Simon. To fight someone because they taunted you in a letter, it’s playing the fool.” You cup his cheeks, keeping his eyes on yours. “You don’t need me to tell you that, and yet here we are.”

He breathes slow, closing his eyes for just a moment. He thinks he came for this, just a little. For clarity. Reason. It comes from you in waves, and it’s comforting to hear. It is something he knew, and yet it only makes sense now that you have said it.

“I know,” Simon mutters. “I know. Y’r right. I’m sorry, luv.”

You ask him to apologize when he undresses you. You ask him to apologize again when he sinks into a hot bath with you. You ask him a third time when he is in your bed, a heavy weight between your thighs as he licks and sucks at the soft skin of your tummy. He begs, lowly, let me ‘ave it, and you will, but he has to say he’s sorry again.

“‘m sorry,” he breathes, sucking on your inner thigh, and you close your thighs around his head, forcing his mouth against your cunt.

“Again, Simon,” you whisper. “I wanna hear it again.”

“‘m sorry,” he slides a rough tongue between your folds, breathing shakily when he tastes the oil that he smoothed over your skin only moments ago. You taste so good, you smell so lovely, coming off of you like fumes blinding his senses so that nothing else but you makes any sense at all. When you open your eyes, you think about where you are, and you nearly come thinking about what you have wrapped around your finger.

Not even your king tells your husband what to do. Not even your king commands his men, they won’t listen, he’s not who they turn to when things go belly-up, it’s your husband, and your husband answers to you.

You weren’t sure about it until today. Seeing him when you asked him to come, it flooded you with something that hurt. You could tell from even so far away that Simon was salivating under that mask. You knew the only thing separating his mouth from your cunt were the other people around him (and they were not privy to seeing you naked).

It is such a thing to observe. John needed a lead on Simon when he was his dog. You need no such mechanism. Simon never strays, not with you. He sits proper when you ask, and he speaks when spoken to. He tears at unwanted flesh, and he comes when you call.

John cannot give him all that he desires. Perhaps he thought what Simon truly wanted was fame and fortune. Legacy. But like most things men do, John does not observe. He takes in only what is right in front of him, and he makes assumptions. Simon is not like other men. Fame and fortune do not matter. He does not care about legacy. What matters to Simon is what he can hold in his hands. The ground under his feet. The steel in his hand. The woman underneath him, spreading her legs, inviting him in.

You love Simon. You love Simon more than anything in the entire world, but it would be a lie to say that you are not at some advantage here. Simon is all-consuming. He is the pinnacle of duty and honor and everything that a man is supposed to be, but Simon is also weak. There is something that he wanted more than anything in the world, and now that he has it, he will do anything to keep it, and that makes him vulnerable. Subject to all kinds of new things. Revenge. Retaliation. Pain.

Manipulation.

Maybe you should feel bad about it. Maybe you should feel guilty, but it’s hard to feel anything like it when there’s a big bear of a man between your thighs slobbering on your pussy like dessert. It’s hard to feel anything but bliss when he’s tracing the letters of his name into your cunt and making you see stars and fucking you into the silk sheets like it’s the last time he’ll ever have you.

It is men who govern your world, and if this is how you must move in it, then so be it. You will not feel bad. You will not be sorry for doing what anyone else would do. John thought he could keep his hand there, muzzle his mutt, but you like him this way, and you’re certain John doesn’t fuck the way you do.

He’s mine.

It isn’t John that commands an army, it’s you; or maybe your cunt, but that belongs to you, too, so it is you, isn’t it? You’re the one that lets him inside, that whispers in his ear, that tells him things you know he wants to hear to make things move in your favor, so it’s you, right?

Not John. Not Victoria. Not their counsel. You. They have stepped on you your entire life. They have made you small and inferior and sad for all of your existence, and they gave you something feral knowing it could eat you alive, and now you are the hand that feeds, and they are forgetting that if they bite too hard, you have something that will surely bite harder.

A collar would suit him, you think. He would look so pretty. He already is, the terrible beast, prettiest thing you’ve ever seen (the necklace your drape over him does just fine, a pendant with his motif that you hope reminds him of you). You don’t care if people would say his face is quite ugly. It is, very much so, but you never see him this way. Whenever that mask falls, your stomach flips. He takes your breath away. His intensity, his raw form of love, the look on his face–there is nothing else in the entire world that will love you the way he loves you.

“You came back for me?” You ask. You have a leg tangled between his, and his fingers are between your thighs, a shadow of a smirk on his face as he feels the mixture of your cum and his. He grunts a little, and you tilt your head to look up at him, your chin on his chest.

“‘f course,” Simon mutters, and you kiss his chest gently, keeping your eyes on his.

“But not for John.”

He turns his head, looking down at you more intently, and he scoffs. You know it’s true, but you want to hear it, anyways. You want to hear Simon admit, unknowingly, that you are the tether.

“John is afraid, and I don’t listen to ‘im when he’s afraid. Makes bad choices.”

It’s almost adorable that this is what Simon tells himself. That he comes back for his own sake, and not for yours, even though they are one and the same, intertwined and inseparable.

“Simon,” you say softly, and he sighs, his eyes closing briefly when you kiss him gently. “You have to listen to your king when he asks you to come back. Making a…rash decision about war strategy is one thing, but…” You cup his cheek gently. “Make things easier for me, husband. If he asks you to come back, you come back.”

This time, at least. Just this time.

Simon snarls a bit, but you swallow it when you kiss him. You maneuver yourself over him, straddling his hips, and he grunts as you sink down on him. He swells hard again very quickly, releasing a deep breath as you give a slow roll of your hips.

“Make things easy for me, my love,” you whisper, and he leans his head back, putting two big hands on your ass and moving you with ease. “Appease your king, yes? For me?”

“Can’t say no when y’r pussy squeezes me like tha’, sweet’eart,” Simon groans, and you giggle, planting your hands on his chest and starting to move a little faster. You lean your head back, your mouth falling open, and you gasp when you sink down completely, your ass touching his thick thighs as you tighten around him. “Fuckin’ Christ–”

“I hate when you go,” you whine, digging your nails into his chest. He hisses, planting his feet on the bed, and he fucks up into you with a renewed fervor. “Hate when you’re not here, Simon, I-I miss you, miss this–”

“Nghh…fuck, I know,” Simon pants. “Can feel it. Feel you.” You squeal when he grips you by the waist and turns you over. He makes it seem so easy, tossing your weight underneath him, and your arms circle around his neck as you draw him closer, hanging onto him. “Y’r so fuckin’ pretty…”

“Simon–”

He kisses to devour. His jaw hinges wide to kiss you sloppy, breathing in the moans that you can’t contain. Simon always fucks so well, stretching your thighs as wide as they will accommodate so he can make room for the goliath of himself that he is. He suffocates, in a good way, and his cock never fails to stretch you for all that you are worth. Simon holds your jaw in place as he grinds into you, relishing in the wet smack of his hips against yours. The fat of you satisfies him. It makes him growl with delight when he grabs onto wide hips, your fat arse, the body that you hold that tells him you are fed and warm and content. It draws his grin wider, and it makes him drool thinking about having you again and again and again, until you beg him for reprieve and his heir sits in your womb.

Simon fucks for sport. He wants to see how stupid he can make you. He wants to know how long you’ll cry for, how fat he can make your tears. He wants to know how loud you will cry, how many times he can make you cum before you’re incoherent, he wants to know the extent to which he can use you that you will still be awake enough to say his name just one more time. Simon is not satisfied until he pushes your limits.

It is what a Riley does. They endure, and they eat, and they consume, and they take pleasure in the all-encompassing indulgement of things they have never been allowed to have. You are a woman, so he knows this will come easy for you. So often, he knows, women are not allowed to indulge at all, so he wants you to. He wants you to cry and moan and eat, and he wants you to do it bearing his name so that no one will ever tell you no.

Simon says no to kings, and they placate, or they die. His wife will be offered the same respect, and he’ll stand behind her with a sword to make it law. When you bear his children, he will expect the same of them–to give their mother utter devotion, lest they answer to his hand. There is no one above you, not God, not country, and certainly not blood. They will know what their father did to have you, and they will spill the same amount of blood to keep it that way. They will do it for you, and then they will do it for their own lovers, and if they don’t have the same sentiments, that love is not true, and Simon will not give his blessing.

Everything else is trivial. He knows this, understands it, because history repeats itself. It is cyclical, and you are right. Kings come and go. Sons die to other sons, fathers make bad decisions, and crowns are passed to bastards and back again, until lineage is merely spectacle and power changes hands often enough to lose generational merit. There is one thing that remains, and it is what you do while you are on earth, while you are standing on the ground you were born on. Even faiths change; when men find it suitable, they change the rules, and then you worship a different God, so Simon sees no point in staying loyal to any of it.

Instead, he is true to what he knows. To what he can see and what he can feel. With John, he remembers being a young man, fighting alongside him. He follows John, to an extent, because he knows what it is like to share blood with him on a muddy hill and take an arrow for him.

With you, time stands still. He saw you in a room, and he had to have you, and he brought nations to ruin to make certain no one would bat an eye when he asked for your hand. He saw you in a dream, too–he saw you laying in his bed of furs, wearing nothing but a tiara of his making, wet between the thighs because that is how it’s meant to be. He recognized you when he saw you that first time, and he doesn’t know how, but saying no to you, really saying no, will change that vision, and he couldn’t bear that.

Your voice echoes. You’re moaning, overstimulated, but he doesn’t stop. The hair around his cock rubs your clit too many times, and when you come around him, you’re a shaking, withering thing, back bowed and nipples pebbled. Your toes curl as you cry from the starry-eyed, hot pleasure, but he keeps moving, chasing something in the distance that he can taste, so close.

Yes, Simon ignored his king. Yes, Simon did not ignore you. Yes, Simon admits, he came when you called, and he doesn’t feel bad about it, he doesn’t care how it seems. He would do it again if he had the chance. John could give him the same answer as you in every timeline, but he will only move if the command comes from you, and yes, Simon knows it makes him a liability, but crowns come with costs, and this is the one John must pay.

Simon will fight any of John’s enemies, but he won’t fight fate. He won’t fight what has already been seen, and he won’t fight what he already knows will happen.

With Simon’s cock in your mouth, you can make him deliver on promises. Sucking on the girth of him, you can make him an honest man. Taking inside of your mouth what you can swallow, you can make Simon do your bidding, and it is a hard lesson that John learns.

“Do this for me,” you slobber against the underside of his cock, and Simon relents.

“Make me happy,” you say, swirling your fingers against your puffy pussy, and Simon kneels with an open mouth.

“Just this once,” you whisper with his cum on your tongue, and Simon seals his choice with his hands on your tits and the taste of himself in his mouth.

When you make eyes with John across the low lights of the throne room, he can’t help the way he admires you. You stand beside Simon, looking the essence of nobility and reverence in another intricate silver and blue dress. The train of your skirt glitters with delicate jewels hand sewn into the fabric, and the headpiece you wear adorns a skull insignia. Your corset has been tied just right, thanks to Simon’s hand, and your own fingers are clasped between his. Your corset and jewels are of exquisite detail–one of the newest designs from Paris, structured and elegant and accentuating every curve of soft skin.

You glow in the room. His wife must be wearing a dress just as expensive, probably more, and yet his eyes (and everyone else’s) cannot help but follow you. Your own eyes won’t leave Simon; you flutter your lashes whenever he looks down at you, big smile on your face, and even when there are people curtsying and bowing to you and giving Simon their gratitude between bites of cake and glugs of wine, your attention never really strays.

John feels inadequate in his own fortress; suddenly, red and gold sicken him, and England tastes sour in his mouth.

In a few generations, John’s house will likely fall. He will make heirs that will fail him, he knows this. In a few centuries, his family will not sit in the same place, but a Riley will remain right where they are supposed to be. Banners of blue and silver will always fly. If Simon does not make sure of that, then you will.

It’s what happens when you force women like you to their knees. When they grow up invisible, always in the shadows, forgotten and sold to the next man who will pay a higher price, it’s what you learned to do. It’s all you’ve ever known, to make the best out of something terrible.

Simon is the same, in that sense. You understand him in a way his king will never be able to. Simon has nothing, and neither do you, and Simon was stepped on and berated and tortured to the point of no return. It is why blood does not scare him and why death doesn’t come knocking. Time will be the only thing capable of killing him, and everyone that stands up to him learns that when they eat his blade.

In the quiet of the evening, Simon undresses you. He sits behind you on the bed, fingers pinching the bows at your back and unraveling them. He traces your corset, thumb circling over the skull pattern of the belt around the small of your waist, and he tastes something warm in his mouth at the sight of it. You look so beautiful–more beautiful than he’s ever seen you maybe, decorated in his colors and wearing his motif and sitting so pretty.

“You wanna know something…funny?” You ask quietly. Simon finds the ties of your skirts and starts to undo them. He grunts in reply; he might sound standoffish, but you know he’s listening. “John…John made it…he makes it seem like you don’t really listen to him. He implied that…in the face of adversity, you might only listen to me.” You put your hands on the front of your corset to keep it from falling. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Wot’s so funny?”

You swallow, looking down. Your hands fidget, and you take a closer look at the ring you wear, the delicate gold band he gave you not so long ago.

“I…”

“Mmm…might be right, innit?” Simon snickers after a moment. You feel him stand, and you look over your shoulder as he peels his mask off and grins down at you. He tilts his head to the side, and you smile back at him a little. “Do anythin’ for ya. Disobeying a king…” Simon cackles, tearing your corset off, tossing it onto the floor as he walks you backwards. “Ignoring one…” He shrugs, “Oll in a day, love.”

“He can hang you for it,” you whisper. “Cut off your head. Cut off mine.”

Simon lays you back on the bed, spreading you out, climbing over you. You blink up at him, and he leans down, pressing his forehead to yours.

“I would ‘ave seen it. I would know.”

He would have seen it in a dream. It would have come to him in a reflection in a pool of blood on the battlefield. It would have come to him, the voices in his head, he would have heard them amongst screaming, or perhaps in the void that he finds his mind in when he’s between your plush thighs.

You can’t help the smile that graces your face when Simon kisses the curve where your jaw meets your neck. It is fun, you suppose. Fun to control the tides that set the courses of history. It is fun and almost unbelievable that a king bends to the will of one man’s wife just because it solidifies his name.

You wrap your hand around the twine that dangles from Simon’s neck. It twirls around your fingers, easy, solid. Simon’s eyes are dark, and they are yours, and when you smile, so does he, because this is where you are meant to be, forever and always.

“What if I want more?” You ask. Simon hums, low from within his chest, and you run your tongue over your teeth. “Did you see that in your dreams, Simon? Hmm? Do you know what I’m asking for? What it is that I really want?”

Simon smiles. A dark one, with teeth, and you know he hears it. What more means for a duke and his duchess. What more means when you have all the money you could ever want, all the land you could ever need.

What more means when you have climbed your way to the top and still desire more. More, more, more. There are not many steps left to climb. There are not many places left to take, not much more of the world that can really be yours, but Simon looks ravenous, and Simon looks hungry, and if you fuck him now, you’ll have him right where you want him.

When you tug on what hangs around his neck, Simon bends. Simon follows.

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creamflix · 23 days ago

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HOW DO THEY GRIEVE? — featuring sukuna, choso, gojo, geto, nanami, toji content warnings: no reader gender/anatomy implied. implied reader death, heavy angst no comfort. established relationship. reader is a mortal in sukuna's part. mentions of murder in toji's part. they/them pronouns used for reader in gojo's part.

the quiet haunted him most.

it wasn’t a noise, nor a cry, but the absence of it — a void left behind where your voice once existed, tugging at his mind like an insidious echo. sukuna sat still, his broad frame rigid against the edge of his throne, clawed fingers wrapped tightly around the curve of his jaw. he wasn’t one to cling, yet here he was, torn by shadows of something he couldn’t clutch tightly enough.

“pathetic,” he muttered to himself, the words bitter against his tongue. his voice cut through the silence, but it wasn’t yours. it would never be yours again.

there were moments, fleeting and infuriating, when he could almost remember you. a flash of a laugh — was it sharp? or soft? — your expression — smiling? or frowning? — your warmth, tangible yet distant, slipping through his memory like grains of sand. sukuna slammed his fist into the wooden armrest of his throne, splinters flying.

"damn you," he growled lowly, though he wasn’t sure if it was directed at himself or at you.

he knew this would happen. of course, it would. you were mortal. fleeting. time was never kind to mortals, and neither was he. what place did someone like you have in his world? he had convinced himself you’d be nothing more than a passing indulgence. but then you had dared to linger in ways no one else had, and sukuna, fool that he was, had allowed it.

he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands. "what was it you used to call me?" his voice cracked — just slightly, a whisper against the still air. not king. not lord. no, you’d stripped him of those titles in private.

ryo.

the way you used to say his name — it hadn’t been reverent. not like others. you said it like it was yours, like he was yours.

but the sound was fading now, no matter how tightly he clung to it. sukuna’s fingers twitched against his temples, nails digging into his scalp. his crimson eyes burned, not with fury, but with a hollow ache.

“you dare slip away from me now?” his voice cracked in the empty room.

he stood abruptly, the motion nearly knocking the throne back. pacing, prowling, his footsteps thudded against the cold stone. his hands clenched and unclenched as though grasping for an answer.

“what was it —” he hissed, his tone a dangerous edge of desperation, “ — that made me let you in?” he paused mid-step, shoulders sagging under the weight of what he knew.

everything. everything about you.

he clenched his jaw, exhaling a breath that rattled with suppressed rage and sorrow. sukuna’s hand reached to his chest, curling around the fabric of his robe where his heart still stubbornly beat.

“if i ever hear your voice again…” he muttered, the words half-prayer, half-promise, “you won’t escape me a second time.”

choso sat in the quiet of his apartment, the hum of the fridge filling the silence. his fingers ghosted over the countertop, tracing invisible patterns that led nowhere. on the table sat a piece of toast, untouched and cold, its edges curling from neglect.

he stared at it, a lump forming in his throat. the memory hit him like a wave, vivid and all-consuming.

"it's just toast, cho!" you had laughed, your voice bright and teasing. he could still see the crinkle of your eyes, the way you covered your mouth to stifle your giggles when he flinched at the toaster's pop.

his chest tightened. "just toast," he echoed to the empty room, his voice hollow.

but it wasn’t just toast. nothing was ever just anything with you. every moment, every mundane thing, had been infused with the light of your presence, leaving pieces of you scattered throughout his life like breadcrumbs.

the laundry machine buzzed faintly in the background, and he shut his eyes. another memory clawed its way forward, unbidden.

“choso! what are you doing?!” you’d yelled, pulling his arm away just as he reached into the spinning drum. “you’ll lose a hand doing that!”

“but it wasn’t —” he had started, confused, only to be cut off by your exasperated sigh.

“don’t. just… don’t.”

and yet, after scolding him, you’d taught him how to sort clothes, how to fold shirts, how to care for the things that mattered.

“you’ve got to take care of things, cho. take care of people, too,” you’d said, softer that time, as you’d brushed lint off his shoulder. “it’s what makes us human.”

human.

his hands balled into fists on the countertop. you had taught him what it meant to be human — how to live, how to feel, how to care. you taught him to look beyond himself, to see others as more than just moving parts in the chaos of life.

“be kind,” you’d told him once, standing at a crosswalk as you watched him glare at a group of kids. “help the ones who need it. give up your seat. hold the door. even when it’s hard, choose kindness.”

he had rolled his eyes back then, muttering something about how the world didn’t deserve it. but you had smiled, patient and unyielding.

“do it anyway.”

the toast sat there, forgotten, as choso stared into the distance. how could he forget you? when you were everywhere? in the hiss of the washing machine, the smell of burnt toast, the sharp pang of guilt when he didn’t offer his seat to someone in need.

you were a part of him now, woven into his bones, etched into his heart.

“how could i forget you?” he whispered, voice trembling as he sat down, head in his hands.

he couldn’t. even if he wanted to. you had made him human. and now, with you gone, he didn’t know how to be anything else.

gojo satoru was a man of stories. he carried your memory in his words, carefully polished and tenderly spun, until they became legends that danced on the tongues of everyone he met.

"oh, y/n?" he'd grin, eyes glimmering like sunlight on fresh snow. "you should’ve seen the way they handled me. not many can keep up with this." he'd tap his temple, his grin softening.

he told them about how you made the best coffee in the mornings, even though you always claimed to hate the way he drowned it in sugar. how you made him laugh so hard that his infinity couldn’t protect him from doubling over. how your voice could cut through the chaos in his mind, grounding him in ways nothing else could.

you became a part of his stories, not just as someone he loved, but as someone who made him better. greater.

people listened with rapt attention, smiling at the way he spoke of you, as if you were still right there beside him. but when the crowds thinned, when the world grew quiet, and satoru was left with nothing but the weight of his own company, the facade cracked.

the apartment felt unbearably still, as if your absence was a tangible thing that pressed against him. he sat on the couch, elbows resting on his knees, head bowed. the usual sparkle in his eyes dulled to a glassy sheen.

his shoulders trembled first, a barely-there quiver that grew into a shudder as the first sob escaped his throat.

“damn it,” he choked out, his voice cracking as he pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes. “damn it, why’d you leave me with this?”

you were the strongest in ways he could never be. while he could manipulate the very fabric of space, you had wielded something far greater: love, compassion, humanity. things that made the unbearable weight of existence lighter, if only for a while.

"who’s gonna remember you when i’m gone?" he whispered into the empty room, voice breaking.

the thought gutted him. satoru lived for you now — not for his students, not for his title, not for his power. it was your memory that anchored him, the fear of losing even the smallest piece of you driving him to hold on tighter than ever.

“i can’t let that happen,” he muttered, fists clenching as fresh tears spilled down his cheeks. his breath came in sharp, uneven gasps. “i can’t let you disappear. not ever.”

so he stayed. fought. lived. not because he feared death — death had always been a fleeting thought to someone like him — but because without him, there would be no one left to carry your memory.

and if there was one thing gojo satoru would never let the universe take from him, it was you.

suguru cursed the gods, cursed fate, and cursed you.

it was easier that way. easier to let the anger scorch him from the inside out than to face the gnawing emptiness that came with your absence. he sat in the ruins of what had once been a temple, the scent of charred wood and blood still lingering in the air. his knuckles ached from where he’d slammed his fists into the wall, and his throat burned from the string of expletives he’d spat at no one in particular.

“why couldn’t you just listen?” his voice was a harsh rasp, cracking as he spoke to the void. “why did you have to be so damn… stubborn?”

you were supposed to understand. supposed to see the world the way he did, to join him in tearing it apart so it could be rebuilt into something better. but you hadn’t.

you stood your ground, unwavering in your righteousness, and it had infuriated him. because for all his power, all his conviction, he couldn’t convince you.

“it’s your fault,” he muttered bitterly, running a hand through his tangled hair. “you and your… your goddamn ideals.”

but the words rang hollow, even to him.

because you were the only one who’d ever made him question himself. you were the only one who’d ever dared to stand in his way, not with malice, but with love.

“you think you’re better than this,” you had told him once, your voice calm but firm. “but you’re not. and i can’t follow you down this path, suguru.”

he hated you for that — for being right. for loving him enough to try and stop him. and for leaving him when he wouldn’t stop.

his fingers tightened into fists, nails biting into his palms. “damn you,” he whispered, though the words lacked the venom they once had.

he wondered, sometimes, if you thought about him as much as he thought about you. if you still believed in the version of him you’d once loved, or if that image had crumbled under the weight of his choices.

maybe, in another life, things were different. a life where there were no sides to choose, no lines to cross, no ideals to clash over. just the two of you.

he closed his eyes, leaning back against the cold stone wall. the anger was gone now, leaving behind only exhaustion and a hollow ache in his chest.

“what am i waiting for?” he asked aloud, his voice barely above a whisper.

there was no answer, just the crackling of dying embers and the distant howl of the wind. but still, he waited.

for you to come back. for the pain to stop. for something — anything — that would make it all make sense again.

and until then, he would curse. and grieve. and wait.

toji didn’t know how to grieve.

his life had never made room for something as soft as sorrow. emotions, in his world, were a luxury — a liability he couldn’t afford. but now, in the absence of you, there was something gnawing at him, raw and unrelenting, that he couldn’t name.

he sat in the dim light of a dingy bar, nursing a half-empty glass of whiskey. the burn was familiar, but it didn’t distract him like it used to. his mind kept circling back to you, dragging him down into memories he couldn’t shake.

the way you used to fuss over his injuries, muttering curses at him for being reckless while your hands worked with tender precision. the way your laughter echoed, rich and warm, cutting through the cold veneer of his life. the way you’d touch his cheek, grounding him, reminding him he was more than the blade he carried.

and now? now there was nothing but silence.

“this one’s for you,” he muttered under his breath, finishing the glass in one harsh gulp before tossing a wad of bills on the counter.

it was always for you. every job, every gamble, every risk — your ghost lingered in every choice he made. toji didn’t bother questioning it; he couldn’t. the thought of you was the only thing keeping him moving, even if it came with a weight that threatened to crush him.

the alley was dark as he cornered his target, the blade in his hand gleaming faintly under the flickering streetlamp. the man whimpered, begging for mercy, but toji didn’t flinch. his movements were fluid, precise, and ruthless.

“don’t beg,” he growled, his voice low and cold. “this ain’t about you.”

and it wasn’t. not really. the man’s life had no meaning to him — just another pawn in the endless cycle of blood and violence. but the rage that fueled him? that was yours.

the blade struck, and with it came a flash of you — your smile, your voice, the warmth he could no longer reach. the man crumpled to the ground, lifeless, and toji stood over him, his chest heaving.

“still not enough,” he muttered, wiping the blade clean with a practiced motion.

it was never enough. no amount of blood could fill the void you left behind. but he kept going, each kill a hollow attempt to feel something other than this aching, unfamiliar emptiness.

toji leaned against the cold brick wall, the night air biting against his skin. he stared at his hands — steady, calloused, and stained.

“why’d you leave me with this, huh?” he muttered to the open air, his voice gruff but cracking at the edges. “you were the only thing that ever made sense.”

his hands clenched into fists, the blade trembling slightly in his grip. this is for you, he reminded himself, even if he didn’t know why. even if it didn’t bring you back.

he ached, and it hurt, but he didn’t know what to do with that pain. so he killed. and he killed. and every time, it was for you.

nanami was a man of routines.

quiet, deliberate, purposeful routines.

he didn’t waver in them, not even after you were gone. if anything, they became his lifeline, a fragile thread tethering him to the semblance of normalcy he desperately clung to.

he set out two plates every night, one for him, one for you. it wasn’t a conscious decision at first; his hands simply moved on autopilot, muscle memory guiding him. but when he sat down to eat, staring at the empty plate across from him, the quiet would settle in — a heavy, suffocating kind of quiet that only existed in the absence of you.

your pillow remained fluffed on the bed, as if you’d be home any moment to claim your spot. sometimes he’d catch himself reaching out to brush a stray hair off it, only to remember it wasn’t yours — it never could be again.

and then there were the chips. that oily, utterly ridiculous brand you adored.

nanami didn’t even like snacks, much less those chips, but he found himself restocking them on every grocery run. he would walk past the aisle, hesitate, and then grab a bag, telling himself it was just habit.

but one day, curiosity — or maybe desperation — got the better of him. he opened the bag, the crinkle of plastic unnervingly loud in the stillness of the house. the scent hit him first, greasy and artificial, and he almost put the bag down.

“what on earth did you see in these?” he muttered under his breath before popping one in his mouth.

it was awful. salty, greasy, overwhelmingly artificial.

and he cried.

the chip barely registered as he sat down heavily, shoulders trembling as tears rolled down his face. it wasn’t the taste — it was everything else. the bag in his hands, the faint smell of your favorite flowers still lingering from the vase on the kitchen counter, the stupid chipped mug you refused to throw away because it was yours.

everything screamed you. your presence was embedded in every corner of the house, in every routine, every object, every space you had once occupied.

and nanami realized, in that moment, how deeply ingrained you were in his life. how even in your absence, you filled it in ways he couldn’t escape.

his fingers tightened around the bag as he let the tears come, quiet and unrelenting.

maybe it was okay to grieve.

maybe it was okay to hold onto the pieces of you that lingered, to let them anchor him in a world that felt so much colder now.

and as he wiped his face with the back of his hand, setting the bag aside, he thought — maybe, just maybe, it was okay to keep buying those ridiculous chips, even if they tasted like crap. because they were yours. and so, in some small, bittersweet way, they were his, too.

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thebubblesareevil · 5 months ago

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Only the best Kings wear pink! Pt 2

Part 1 part 3

The day things changed was just like any other. The Keep was decked out with pink decorations and different activities though-out the castle, including but not limited to: tea in the garden, manicure stations, parent playgrounds (note spa), bowification stations, the glitter corner, the archery range, Queen Dorothea’s dragon tower…etc

Everything was ready for their monthly guests when, rather unexpectedly, he heard a knock at the door.

His guests had long forgone knocking (the parents could rarely get to the door before the children charged in). He managed to get to the door, waving off a busy maid carrying a delicious looking cake, where her was greeted by the teary eyed face of a young girl.

That in itself was odd, Danny made a point of no tears in the keep.

There was also the fact that she was very much alive.

Danny immediately kneeled in front of the little girl.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your tears, but are you here for the princess tea party?” He asked gently.

The little girl sniffled. “Tea party?”

Danny nodded. “All the little princesses of my Kingdom are invited.”

“But I’m not a princess.” She cried a bit more. Danny gave her a thoughtful hum.

“You certainly look like a princess to me.” Danny stated. “Are you lost little princess?”

She nodded, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

“Tell you what, why don’t you join us for our tea party and then I’ll personally escort you back to your castle, what do you say?”

The little girl sniffled, pondering for a moment before nodding.

“Wonderful!” Danny grinned. “And may I learn the name of the such an adorable princess?”

The little girl giggled “Lian! Lian Harper!”

“A lovely name for a lovely princess!” Danny grinned. “C’mon, I’m sure Lilac can get you your very own princess dress while we wait for the others.

——-

Lian fit in perfectly with the other children. Some of the parents seemed a bit skeptical, though they quickly accepted it after a brief explanation from the King.

Some parents went straight for the spa while others headed towards the suggestion room. (It really cut down on audiences when issues could be resolved with a letter)

All too soon the day ended and skulker reported to Danny with Lian’s home address.

Danny found her in the garden napping among the blossoms.

Danny smiled, gently nudging the girl awake.

“Lian? It’s time to go home now.”

“Hmmm?” Lian sluggishly raise her arms to be picked up by the King. Danny chuckled.

“Of course.” He gently picked, cradling her in his arms.

Silently he opened a portal into Lian’s bedroom carefully tucking her into bed.

Not even a moment after he vanished did a frantic babysitter rushed into the room, nearly sobbing in relief when she found the little girl.

(She was never playing hide and seek with the little ninja again)

——-

For the next few months the pattern continued. Though somehow no one ever seemed to notice when the girl vanished each month.

She had fully indoctrinated herself among the little ghosts of the tea party, every month the boys would challenge her to an archery bout and lose each time reluctantly conceding to getting the makeup done with each loss. (Edgar was quite fond of rainbow unicorn sparkle nails)

She was never late nor was she ever early (this led to many suspicions that Danny didn’t care enough to confirm). More than anything, after the 2nd time of her wandering into his Keep, Danny made a point of giving her a ghost whistle to call cujo if she ever got lost or needed him.

So he was understandably concerned when he was summoned by his (favorite) little princess by magic of all things.

He of course answered to summons (what if she was in dAnGeR???!?!?)

He stepped out of the portal at his full size, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling of the warehouse he found himself in.

Danny frowned, looking around he didn’t see Lian until he looked down at the crying little princess at his feet. Danny immediately shrunk down, completely ignoring the heroes fighting the cloaked (cultist? Fanatics? Victims of his wrath? That last one felt right) soon to be victims of his wrath.

Once he was at more manageable size he picked up Lian and swiftly removed her bindings.

“What’s wrong princess? If you wanted to see me all you needed to do was call.” He asked gently combing her hair with his claws, ignoring the red headed archer shouts.

“The mean men said they were gonna hurt Daddy and uncle Jay Jay, and all their friends!” She sniffled looking up at Danny giving him a clear view of the line of blood on her neck where his (very) soon to be victims nicked her.

“Shh, shh, don’t you worry princess. Why don’t you go hang out in the keep and help Spectre paint Banshees nail, hmm? I’m sure Fright would love it if you could braid his hair again too.” Lian pressed her wet face into Danny’s chest as she nodded.

He reached out, opening a small portal to gently place the little princess in his daughter’s room with a quick explanation.

He temporarily ignored the red heads screams and allowed the flurry of arrows and gunfire to pass through him.

He had other things to deal with right now.

“Now who do I have the pleasure of destroying today?”

One of the cloaked soon to be victims was clearly an imbecile as he stepped forward and began to shout.

“We offer you these two sacrifices in addition to the girl, that you might grant us the power to defeat our enemies, o mighty King of the Infinite Realms!”

Danny took a moment to count. “How strange, see I counted 15 victims and 2 spectators. You must need to get your glasses checked” Danny nodded to himself, allowing his for to stretch and his power to fill the room.

“But, I don’t have-“

Danny struck hard and fast. They would never see the light of day again.

After he was done disposing of the trash, he turned his attention to the heroes. Each of which had a weapon trained on his head, unfortunately human weapons didn’t work on him so they wouldn’t be much help.

“You son of a bitch! Give her back!!!” The red head shouted, his hands shaking.

“The rest of our team will be here any minute! Surrender now return the girl and we won’t have to fight you!” Helmet head shouted. Something felt off about that one, almost…familiar. Danny squinted and made a (probably stupid decision)

“Hmmm, nope” he snapped his fingers and two portals appeared underfoot of the two heroes.

#danny phantom #ghost king danny #dc x dp #roy harper #lian harper #princess parties for the win #Jason Todd #minor dead on main #romance is not the objective it’s just gonna be cute #gonna have to make a pt 3 after I’m done at the gym

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nelkcats · 1 year ago

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Strange courtship gifts

The last thing anyone would expect is for the Joker to believe in the supernatural, but apparently Gotham was in luck, because the clown was about to make a deal with the King of all ghosts to revive his prized foe.

Said King was not happy about the request, nor did he care about the clown's feelings, but he knew it was a necessary evil. Or at least, that's what Clockwork told him; of course, Danny didn't intend to do anything for free.

The Joker got his wish, Bruce came back from the dead and Danny wondered what he should do with the clown's soul. With a shrug he decided to put it to the best possible use and wrapped it in a little bow before handing it over to Jason Todd.

Jason thought it was a joke, a cute guy giving him a gift out of nowhere and claiming that the frozen ball in his hand was the Joker's soul? Yeah, right.

However, John Constantine came through Gotham and it became obvious that it wasn't a joke and that the cute guy was more than just a regular guy. It also came with the feature that Bruce returned to the living, which made him strangely relieved.

And fuck, reckless or not, Jason needed to find the guy again and steal the air out of his lungs, because that weird ball was the best gift he'd ever been given in his life and it might as well be an engagement ring.

#dpxdc #ghost king danny #The Joker makes a deal with Danny #Danny knows he should accept but he really hates clowns #so he asked for what he would never ask for #his soul #the Joker accepted because he didn't care very much #he just wanted Batman alive #Bruce came back from the dead and scared his family #Danny ended up with the Joker's soul #but obviously he didn't want it #so he gave it to someone who wanted it #that is to say the cute halfa with anger problems that was killed by the clown #dp x dc #dc x dp #deadonmain #Jason believes that giving him the soul of his greatest enemy is a strange form of courtship #but he will accept the proposal anyway

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ghostbsuter · 1 year ago

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"What exactly are halfas?" Constantine asks, cigarette lit and leaning against the table.

They were in the justice league, having attended a meeting previously and now just lazed around.

Batman loses focus on his laptop screen and openly looks at the two, interested.

Green Lantern, Hal, jerks up at the question, looking between everyone still in the room and trying (and failing) to seem uninterested.

Zatara is glaring daggers at Constantine's back, eyes narrowed.

While flash had no context, having just arrived back with his food to sit with the rest, he appropriately tenses as well, from just one glance around the room.

Superman and Wonder woman aren't different from batman, not as discreet as some are trying to be and just staring at the two.

Slightly amused, Danny decided to entertain the question.

"Unlike ghosts and the undead, halfas are created and not born." He explains, looking at the man when he writes it down.

Who knew the infinity realm were this closed off that John Constantine had to get information from the source itself just to keep updated?

"Care to elaborate?"

Clicking his tongue, he does so.

"Halfas get created during extreme circumstances, it has to be right place, right time and correct amount of ectoplasm." Danny catches the lollipop that Batman throws at him, sending the bat a quick smile.

"Not everyone can become a halfa, our race is a rarity amongst the dead."Constantine raises a brow, pursing his lips. "There are only 3 of you right? Is that a normal amount in the realms?"

Another click. "No, thousands of years ago, when our kind reached its peak of over hundreds of people, Pariah Dark happened."

He briefly shares a glance with Martian Manhunter, he wonders if anyone here sent out a message of phantom story time? Why were they all lounging around?

"It was genocide. He killed off an entire species just because he felt threatened." He shrugs.

Constantine jolts, eyes clear as if he'd just connected the dots.

"So his downfall wasn't only because of rights of conquest but— the reason no one joined nor fought between you and the old King was because it was a revenge kill."

Danny ponders the words over, nodding. Yeah that sounds right.

"Many aren't surprised that Pariah Dark went berserk. It was kind of predictable, considering his soul was brought to the Infinity Realms after he'd died in the Phantom Zone as you know it."

Hal straightens up, Batman tenses and Diana leans forward.

"This previous King of yours– he was a past prisoner of Aethyr's Mind?"

The halfa nods, uncertain now that he'd stumbled upon unknown territory.

"Yes, the Phantom Zone and the Infinity Realms are sister spaces. Were you not aware?"

They were not, he quickly finds out.

Fumbling with his words, mind working overdrive as he sorts through information, he speaks again. "They are the two sides of the same coin, Phantom Zone being non-habitable while the Ghost Zone is filled with unalive."

He briefly struggles with his words, genuinely taken off guard with the lack of knowledge.

"Aethyr isn't just a being, but someone who is connected to the realm itself. Its similar to my position as King of the ghost zone." He summons his crown of ice to simple gesture.

"Besides! Phantom Zone, Zero Zone? Anti-infinite? That's literally the opposite of the Ghost Zone, the Infinite Realms!" he exclaims, throwing his hands up.

"Could you tell us more of your realm?" Superman asks, voice gentle and non threatening. "Some of us have been in the Phantom Zone, so hearing that there is a place being the complete opposite?"

The halfa nods in understanding. "Sure, why not?"

Three simple words yet everyone feels the trust put on them with such information.

"The entire realm is an ever shifting space, we categorise eith the sectors of each afterlife. From the Greeks to the Yetis and different eras."

—

(The tale of his realm lasts longer than expected, it is only when Hal started to get ready to leave does Danny address a certain area in his zone.

"The... Emerald Space is also a sector of the Infinity realm. The sector itself is formed in a sphere like form, we aren't sure what's inside since the fallen lanterns keep to themselves rather."

Hal froze, eyes catching the ghosts, and looked away again. He'd tell OA of this, but now he was going home.

Danny watched him leave and declared it down for now, free for more question the next time and left just as fast.

At least Constantine and Zatara can update their books now.)

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #fic prompt #writing prompt #worldbuilding #dc x dp prompt #danny talks abt the ghost zone and the phantom zone #the phantom zone and the ghost zone are sister spaces #connie just wanted a fresh history lesson and got glared by ztarara instead #i love writing pissed off zatara

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cherie-doll · 26 days ago

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𓆩♡𓆪 Headcanon: They're Your Bodyguards (Royalty x Knight AU Part #2)

𖠁 Price, Ghost, Soap, Gaz, Roach, Alejandro, Rudy, Phillip Graves, Makarov, Keegan, König, Horangi, Nikto

❦ Based off this hc I had written a while back

Price

He upholds his noble promises, he wouldn't ever dare to wander too close into your life

With every string tugging at his heart, he restrains the overwhelming feelings, he remembers the oaths he's made

To keep in this way was dancing death's waltz

Oh, but your soft silhouette blending in the foliage with the aura of golden sun was refreshing like morning dew, how is it possible for the human heart to long for something it has never had? We dream of a haven, but is there hardly one on this earth?

He longs to have what is restricted, maybe what has been out of reach has always appealed to us, since children we want what is above us, as young people we crave what makes us feel alive, and in our limited existence we continue to search for it

It was all forsaken; what was left unsaid, the silent sentiment, the shared glances that were neither given nor taken, for nothing was accidental nor hidden between the both of you... only guarded

Ghost

Here is another fool, one who thinks love is a controlled emotion, have pity on him!

The only salvation he can be found guilty of on base of selfishness is imagining you imagining him, secretly he loses himself in fantasies of a future that can never be

He hath nothing but muted passion for you

And from the silence, is it possible to determine the outcome? It does nothing more but to hurt one's feelings, does the bearer more hurt than partaking in improper fantasies, for it is all in vain and a reaching for and grasping at the wind

In the end the happiest fool is miserable, the most disciplined king conquers nothing, and the bravest knight afraid of battle

What pain for nothing!

Soap

Not a word from your lips heard, not a touch felt nor a sensation given, but those eyes speak for the entire soul

This story doesn't have to be a tragedy, because no matter what it will never end the way everybody wants it to, "vivamus, moriendum est", but you'll let yourselves live blissfully

Nothing can stifle his silent joy, his merry face goes about all day desirous of crushing you with a million acts of affection

The mindless dialogue he recites, staring off into nothing as he finds your capricious eyes shining like a glow the lake flashes at the evening sun

He'll find beauty in your entire being and relate it to things because if one day, you find each other a long way off, the sentiment will remain and the earth will remember you and remind him

Gaz

What's forbidden only makes the temptation greater, hm?

With such yearning and softening of his eyes does he gaze at you, it's a feeling that's so heavy and present in the air it's impossible to ignore, an energy only igniting between you both

He's engulfed in dreams of what could be, but surely it's not all just a figment of his imagination, to a certain point you mirror his thoughts

The emotions that won't stop growing rise to the surface and threaten to breakthrough, ruining his discipline, yet are always present and showing through every act and small interaction with you

The brushing against one another, the whispers that want to turn into screams, the heart begging to be let out

Roach

It had been dawning on him, a premonition of sorts in the air since he started serving your family, as if it was destined to happen

Now as he gazes up at you from his head lying on your lap, your bodies hidden from view by the tall hedges and vines in the garden, he almost melts at the sight of you

Even if the weather isn't favorable, you walk hand in hand, free of worries for an evening or night, it feels as if the sky could be never-changing and the circumstance always right

And as he reflects back on this years later, he remembers it fondly, though now gone and far away from one another, he gathers these memories and wonders if there was no ending to it, would you two have kept laughing innocently?

He would let your name slip from his lips one last time as if calling you softly into the fading sunlight

Alejandro

Every time you cross paths after meeting and loving in secret it is like the morning after a heavy torrent of rain, you cannot hide the smiles breaking out onto your faces, nor the fidgeting of hands wanting to embrace each other

An impulse so strong that it can barely be contained when he gazes deep within your cherub eyes, your lashes fluttering as the shimmering sunlight reflects on water, this scene all too perfect

Curiously, he will gaze at you and construct the most beautiful verses he seriously believes he would have made a great poet

You're everything he's held dear, not only does he love tenderly but deeply, you hit every feeling spot within him unveiling a new world

Rudy

Oh, but he's so respectful, so contained, so true to his word, until he finds himself alone in your chambers, faced with an order he has the right to deny or be a little selfish

For once he is given choice and it is difficult to remember his priorities

How could he deny? When you're murmuring so softly, and you're welcoming him so well, making the weight on his shoulders feel lighter even if it's a false feeling only for a little while

He'll cherish that moment for a lifetime, because for once he's known what heaven feels like, smiling easier and more often

His mind drifting back to you, you're unforgettable, not just a fleeting moment but an experience

Phillip Graves

He looks curiously at what is before him; the kingdom's precious flower, and as he gazes he becomes entranced in a thread that with time will become too hard to be undone by a single pull

It starts out as a foolish act but soon grows into much more, but was he ready for what came with it? The yearning, the sensitivity and vulnerability he was exposing himself to?

With every look that gained new meaning and lost their playfulness, you became all too attached and duty no longer was first

Perhaps this was the beginning of your descent, your spiraling into doom and recklessness, crumbling and giving in to your heart who beats so wildly only once in this ephemeral sentiment

Makarov

The repetitive phrase that leaves your lips every time, "we can't do this" or "we shouldn't", always the regret setting in after saying you've let go

And frankly, he doesn't care nor does he care whether you completely let go of it or not, it'll be your stone to carry, not his

Just feel the pull between you, focus on the fact that you're in his arms right now, your royal attire loosely around your shoulders and your worries and responsibilities should be a mile off by now

Concentrate on what you feel, he's trying to remind you, there is nothing selfish in enjoying the sensations for a little while

Or is he trying to put his conscience at ease with these words he tells you? What a reflection of his soul they are, and what truth do they carry

Keegan

You find him deeply captivating and intriguing, you feel bad for having so much curiosity for him

In a room full of people and yet you always wonder if he's there among the crowd, and with so much noise in the world does he stop and listen for your voice?

So dreamlike were these short moments of delight it must've been a dream, you met only at midnight behind heavy velvet curtains that obscured all light

You could only feel with your fingertips and hear soft murmurs that you tried to memorize, you would later pray in your tucked corner of the room, whispering softly into your blankets that it was real

Someone felt for you and the memories had really happened

König

The brooding figure that wishes he had the privilege of learning about you without repercussions, without that nagging thought of it coming back to bite at him

To color in the blank spaces of unknown, wishing to reside in the intimacy of your heart and mind, to navigate what is familiar

The blossoming interest in you reflecting in his eyes, making you feel a strange sense of safety when with him, a calming feeling that you welcome too well when in his presence you find rare to recreate when alone

Not even castle walls could grant as much security as he could, they were old and empty, standing many years and guarding many families before you, it was only a false sense of security that had been handed down to you

But he, he was your own, your own to cherish and love for now and even if his love wasn't a family heirloom to pass down maybe that was fine, let yourself hold this selfishness close to your chest

Horangi

A gambling game he is playing, it's as if he has a thing for chasing after what is not secure nor certain, but that's what makes it appealing

He doesn't stick much to rules, if he does it's only for a short time until he finds his own way of doing things, he was never concerned with playing the game fair

So he's not hesitant nor does he shy from trying risky things with you, it's all a game to him

The momentum only increasing as the stakes rise and he finds himself almost tying his fate to you, wanting for once in his life a secure future he can be sure to have, to reach out for and receive

Nikto

The craving for something different and rattling came to you when you discovered his tarnished past

It was so different to what you knew, and maybe it was in that darkness and chaos that you found comfort, a world you wanted him to share with you, more intimate than any touch

More erotic and through-provoking were his shards of soul revealed to you than an affair, and his growing confusion at how easily he shared parts of him with you

A hidden memory arising from the depths of his mind, trying to show him how comforting it felt to be perceived for what you were, he wanted to indulge in it a little longer each time

He knew his desires and dreams wouldn't change a thing in his life, but this peace freed him from the chains that had been weighing heavy, he felt lighter and allowed himself to long for someone

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moodymisty · 2 months ago

Text

Part 1

Author's note: I love him

Relationships: Mortarion/Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mortarion's confession, NSFW flashback in the beginning with male masturbation, vomit (nonsexual and unrelated to NSFW scene), gross Morty body stuff, he has zero rizz

The repeated hiss of his respirator is heavy in the stagnant air of the hall, only occasionally losing its smooth crescendo and decline when his throat hitches. His breathing has never been normal- he stopped caring about that sort of thing long ago.

Pale eyes glance around again.

You should be here by now; But he spots nothing familiar.

Did you decide- to for the first time since he first cast his eyes on you- to disobey him? Did something else distract you?

His mind fills with imagery of you wandering off somewhere else, to someone else- and in an impulsive fit of doubt he decides that he would have one of his men drag you here if need be.

He could, and if anything the behavior would be expected of him. Encouraged. You don't make the Pale King wait.

But yet... He waits- patiently- eyes flicking to the entryway every twenty seconds or so. A primarch standing around like a beaten dog waiting for it's master.

Embarrassing.

Attempting to clear his throat Mortarion shifts beneath his clothes, feeling the way they almost stick to his skin. He bathed himself relatively recently by his standards- though instead of the stick of grime and dirt, it's the catch of dried sweat from no less than an hour ago.

He can still feel that sensation in the back of his head, the aftershocks of thoughts and actions forbidden. He hates how this one has lingered. They've all begun to.

His cock throbbed, leaking over his gaunt, pale fingers and making his shaft slicker- and the feeling even more pleasant.

He covered his face full of a warranted shame, grunting and huffing as he ground into his own hand like some sort of feral street dog. His knees cracked, his back ached- he imagined the callused give of his hand was warmer, wetter, tighter- squeezing around him. Pushing back. Trying to push him out; The difference in size too great. The way he was bent made the imagery more vivid, like you were pinned underneath him.

If he closed his eyes tight enough, he could just picture it, though the image was just out of reach- his fingertips ghosting the very edge but unable to grasp it.

He stained the fabric of his bed once he was done, shoving it into the fireplace to burn. No one will ever see the scattering of fabric that is yet burned, nor would they question it even if they did.

How much farther can he let himself fall? Enough that he's found himself overtaken by desires that he once thought were pointless- inconvenient and only satiated out of maintenance, desperate for something he knows he cannot have?

Maybe... Perhaps if he-

If you refuse him, he can abandon this entire pursuit- throw himself back into his work and give not a single thought to you again. You could leave The Endurance and he wouldn't even know you were gone, lost among an endless sea of pointless existences.

Because he can't... he can't keep doing this.

It's consuming his mind- You are consuming his mind.

You eat away at it like a disease bent on devouring him more than the poisons of Barbarus ever have; At least they never impeded with his mental capacity.

As you do right now- your soft eyes eat away at his dried, scarred skin like a flesh eating plague as you come to stand before him, and now his tongue feels as if it's made of lead.

He called you here- coming to you would seem too desperate- and your first words had been to apologize if you had offended him. A smart intuition, because you did offend him; You offended him by refusing to leave his mind, you offended him by refusing to leave him be in the sanctity of his warship, you offended him by offering him what he can only describe as pity.

But pity wears away; You've stayed, endured where your fellows left. For what reasons kept you going? Kept you here? He'd like to know.

"I," Mortarion hesitates for a moment. "I wish to speak to you about a particular matter."

This is it. He is just going to do it. Just get over this, and if you refuse? if you run away from him in fear or disgust? He's down his last remembrancer.

boo hoo. He never wanted them anyhow.

His rusty armor clunks against each other as he shifts. You watch him with expectancy, a soft look on your face that has Mortarion almost at a loss for words, if only for a moment.

He should take off his respirator for this.

It's clunky, gets in the way, he feels like it muffles his speech and baseline humans have trouble understanding him. Their paltry hearing, though it is fact. Though he's never remembered you having an issue with it.

He can feel your eyes watching keenly as he starts to unfasten in, accidentally tangling his hair a bit at the nape of his neck. He hears the hiss as it unseals, and he pulls it away from his face to fasten it to his belt. He feels ok, and takes on full breath of cool Terran air before opening his mouth to let the first unmuffled word pass.

But before a single word can leave his lips he instantly rips into a massive cough, covering his mouth with his hands. He feels spittle and blood from popped blood vessels hit his palms, and his ribs shift uncomfortably as he keels over. He can feel the way his lungs are ripping themselves apart, filling with blood and mucus. The next cough sends him to his knee, his leg plating hitting the ground hard enough to crack the tile beneath him.

He can barely make out your expression standing before him as tears prick the corners of his eyes, and another burst of coughs tear at his throat like the claws of a gauntlet.

You look horrified.

He tries with all his might to tense his throat and halt the hacking, but only manages to suck in just enough breath that it brushes the back of his throat and makes it all worse.

You take a step closer to him, but it's clear there's nothing you can do to help him.

"L-Lord Mortarion! Are you-"

From the incessant coughing his throat seizes up so much, his stomach muscles ache in pain, and he feels a familiar rising warmth in his face and mouth.

No. No no no no no-

Fulgrim's banquet feast from the night before suddenly rises in his throat, then his mouth, and before he can even try stopping it- it's running through his fingers and all over the floor with a disgusting splatter.

After harsh fit of coughing wracks his body, slowly feeling the ache in his chest of his lungs finally healing before it finally secedes; He wipes his eyes to see you standing and staring at him in shock, the primarch's dinner all over the floor in front of you.

Mortarion has had a long life; Longer that yours, by a decent margin. Embarrassment was never something he dealt with.

Now, he feels like he is quite literally going to explode. If the ground were to open up and swallow him, he would probably acquiesce to his fate with little complaint.

No one would miss him. Plus he's sure Garro and Typhon would manage just fine without him.

"Are..."

You look at him with wide eyes, mouth slightly agape. He can see your lips twitch as you try to find the words. He perhaps would understand if your little brain couldn't find any.

"...Are you ok?"

He doesn't quite know how to answer that question, honestly.

His lungs have degraded and rebuilt themselves enough to breathe this cool, poison-less air, and while he had anticipated some coughing, he failed to remember just how... Intense, it could get.

He should have known eating last night was a mistake.

You just seem worried, however- looking at him like he's going to fall right over hands outstretched towards him. You look at him like he's sick, but sick in a way that would could in theory help.

You take a step forward, much to his surprise; Though of course not close enough to risk slipping.

By the Throne- the half thought of that crosses his mind and he wants to cast his own head into his bedchamber's fireplace.

"I-" Mortarion lets out another brief cough; Of which thankfully doesn't lead into another fit. "I am fine."

He is fine- his lungs have adjusted and the air doesn't burn his throat, but you don't seem to take his words seriously. With the deftness of your thin fingers you unwrap the shawl around your shoulders, handing it to him.

"...Here."

He doesn't get what you mean by this at first, staring at the patterned fabric like it in some way offended him. You gesture it out to him again, and he then realizes you're offering it to him to clean up, of which he then begrudgingly grabs, before wiping the bile out of the corners of his mouth and fingers.

The soft fabric of your clothing now destroyed, he balls it up in his fist and holds onto it, discontent to ever dare try and return it to you soiled.

"Lets, lets get you something to drink. I would think you might need one right about now..."

You reach to grasp his hand- the clean one- and try to pull him along, of which he allows, surprisingly.

He lets himself get toted along by someone half his size; A pathetic sight.

He continues to let it happen until you find a serf you can order to get some water, and Mortarion can shirk off to clean his hand and face.

His mouth doesn't taste like bile anymore, at least.

When he sees you again after he's cleaned up, there's an odd look on your face. Your wring your wrists nervously.

"...You were going to say something?" You look at him expectantly, before clarifying. "Before you started coughing, you... You said you wanted to talk to me. What was it?"

He had.

He had wanted to tell you how he felt, and instead he had humiliated himself by coughing blood and vomit all over the floor. He displayed right in front of you that he is a broken, sick and decayed excuse for a man; He was built for death and war, not... this. The fact that he's even allowed himself to make a fool out of himself like this is an embarrassment to the entire legion and reputation he's crafted.

How you could ever look at him the way he so boldly, pathetically, desperately wishes when he- a primarch- just displayed what a vile excuse for a human he is?

Mortarion swallows thickly like there's a literal knot in his throat, before just turning around and walking away.

#mortarion x reader #primarch x reader #warhammer 40k x reader #reader insert #reader #mywriting #fem!reader

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barbieaemond · 11 months ago

Text

The King of Qarth I

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Qartheen f!reader (use of third perspective)

Warnings: angst, dubcon (but not really), handjob, fingering, p in v, hints at sexual trauma, self indulgent use of sorcery

Word count: 11k (i know...i'm sorry...)

Author’s note: The foreign words you’ll find are stolen from Greek. Second and final part coming in two weeks. English is not my first language.

taglist: @zae5 @multyfangirl @arcielee @succnfuccubus @zaldritzosrose @kckt88 @venmondiese @miraclealignertlsp369 @ilikechocolatemilkh @credulouskhaleesi @bunbunbl0gs

He had taken each one of them. Dragons, power, the Crown. Snatched them from whatever divine plan the Gods had concocted, for others, never for him, and perhaps this was their punishment.

Death would’ve been a far too kind blessing, he would come to realise in one of those endless days spent wandering, roaming to find some meal, a softer clod to lie on, an identity.

Prince, Protector of the Realm, Rider of Vhagar, Blood of Old Valyria.

They were nothing more than shrouds. Once stripped of them, what was left was merely a man.

And a son. That’s what his mother saw when they threw him on the ground of the Throne Room.

Crawling on her knees like some commoner, she begged and sobbed until her voice became raw and her throat hoarse, chanting obsessively the same plea over and over like a mad woman.

"Please...have mercy in the name of the Mother… my only son...” she had bent so much as to graze the toe of Corlys Velaryon's boots with her face. “you took them all...you took them all...”

Whether she was talking to the Sea Snake, Rhaenyra, the Gods or fate, Aemond didn’t know. He didn’t know the woman kneeling before him, if he ever truly knew her. You cannot know ghosts, only walk through them.

He could not look at her. He turned his head and watched over that crowd of traitors looking down on him, as if they themselves had not looted, slaughtered, and burned more innocent than guilty.

Trained puppets they were, obeying like green little soldiers to Cregan Stark, a northern savage who had taken upon himself the right and duty to do justice. Corlys Velaryon knew it well, having spent days and nights in the dungeons as an accomplice in the poisoning of Aegon the Elder. And there they were, taking over the reins of a kingdom shattered and embittered by war.

But with the promise of Alysanne Blackwood’s hand in marriage, the Wolf had been tamed. He had stopped howling about trials and executions. Now, caution moved and bogged down their decisions. But one thing was clear as a law written in stone: there had to be peace, no matter the cost. Hence, a marriage had been arranged, between two children who, for no reason, had been taught to see the other as the enemy, whose eyes had seen too much death; orphaned and thrown like marbles into a game that brought neither smiles nor laughter to their sepulchral mouths.

She was looking at him, Jaehaera, and in her empty eyes Aemond could see Helaena climbing up the windowsill and letting herself fall.

“What happened to Vhagar?” The Sea Snake asked “Kinslayer! What about your dragon?”

"Dead.” He lied, although he didn’t know for how long that lie would remain so. That rope in his heart had loosened, weakened, but it still held. She must have crawled off to some remote place, perhaps beyond the Neck, to recover from the injuries to her neck and right wing.

Then the Sea Snake had turned his back, consulting with his council of leeches. Exile. He heard them say. Essos. And then that word he hadn’t heard for a long time. Dragonless. A kinder word for useless. Powerless.

“Let him go, Corlys. He’s always been a spoiled brat. He won’t survive for long in those savage lands.” Someone said outside the cell they threw him in, shackled with chains on wrists and ankles like some rabid dog.

He won’t survive for long.

How he wished they were right. How he wished to look into the beady eyes of the Stranger.

Alicent would curse him, perhaps she would slap him as she used to slap Aegon for being so blasphemous, not to the Gods, but to her. Aemond was no father, and no matter how much he could try, he’d never understood the fierce, unforgiving grip motherhood had on a woman.

When he saw her for the last time before being thrown on a ship to Braavos, he realized it was the only tether that kept her alive. Him and Jaehaera.

“Just a little longer, please…just a little…” she pleaded to his jailers. With the arranged marriage, cruelties had softened, and concessions became more frequent. The Dowager Queen was granted to see her son for the last time.

“Mother!” he screamed as they dragged him away “Keep your fucking hands off me!”

He needed to speak to her. He needed her to tell him she was lying.

“Mother, there’s a woman…”

“The Strong witch? Aemond, she’s…They captured our last allies from the Reach and…they said they found a woman in the woods but…she was in pain…and bleeding….”

The Gods’ punishment flowed through the long-cowled robe of the Stranger. And he took them all.

Aegon, Helaena, Daeron. Alys and the baby.

Alicent could not bear to see the last piece of her flesh and bones being cloaked by the cold shroud of the Stranger. And so, she crawled and begged to preserve his existence.

But that, that was no existence.

It was a limbo, a hanging life for the damned. And he was one, wasn't he? He killed kin, he killed innocent men, women and children, coming from above like a heaven banished God unleashing his wrath on the world. And even gods pay for their sins.

Only he would gladly have stuck his head in a noose or waited for the hangman's blade, a death worthy of a soldier, rather than wandering like a derelict, rootless and restless, with that rope pulling and fraying day after day. Or Weeks? Moons? He had no idea how much time had passed since he’d set foot in that limbo.

He seemed to be living in a slumber, a Milk of the Poppy hallucination. And yet, the ground was real beneath his exhausted feet, as was the heat, and at some point, the hunger.

The leeches had tried to appear civil and compassionate, lying to his mother’s face about the gold they would give him, to sustain himself once reached the East. But naturally, they didn’t keep their word. If he died of starvation, he was sure they would have lit a candle to each God in the Grand Sept. They probably prayed for that to happen.

Or maybe not. Maybe there was no greater gratification and source of amusement to know that the haughty Prince Aemond was tasting the everyday humiliation of having to steal in order not to starve, of not having clean clothes, feather pillows to lie on, the disgrace of not being able to give orders to anyone, but rather having to suffer them.

He stayed in Bravoos for a short time. It was too dangerous, too close to Westeros and too wary if anyone ever caught the color of his hair under the cloak’s hood. He remembered his history books quite well. It was the only one among the Free Cities that did not yield to the Valyrian empire; indeed, it was founded by a group of rebellious slaves fled from the tyranny of the Dragon Lords.

Volantis, on the contrary, worshipped the Old Empire. But in equal measure, they worshipped slavery. The city swarmed with mercenaries and slavers, peddling men and women like meat for slaughter, ready at every corner to steal children from the streets. And in Volantis Aemond understood that if he did not want to end up in some butcher’s hands, he had to be what he had always been: a soldier. For he realized that everywhere in the world, the most valuable currency was not gold, nor castles and titles, but blood.

This man for new fresh clothes, that woman for few gold coins and a mattress to rest his back, not to sleep. Sleep eluded him, as well as remorse. Unless his body shut his mind out of exhaustion, he lied there for hours on end, with blood drying on his hands, listening to all the ghosts floating around him, and trying to find a grip—something to hold on to. Duty had been the blacksmith who forged him and the altar to which he devoted himself. Duty to his family, his brother, the crown, the throne, even Alys, yes. For all her riddles and stumps of prophecy, he wanted her. He wanted that son.

But here, he had no high purpose to serve but himself. Stripped of all honors and many more curses, he fell into a daylong stupor, made of blood, humiliations and silent cries for revenge.

Until one day, the rope went taut.

Vhagar burned away the stupor. She had found him. For the second time, she had been his salvation. And on her back, he found a fragment of who he was, but who he was supposed to be remained a distant thing, clouded in smoke.

He flew south, over the ruins of Old Valyria, and then east, crossing all of Vaes Dothrak to the Red Waste, and by the time he realized he should've veered north or south, it was too late.

He was in the middle of the widest and driest desert on the eastern continent.

The Garden of Bones, as they called it, and with good reason. For in those few times that Aemond decided to land to allow Vhagar to rest, all his eye could see were sand, devilgrass and bones. But he didn’t care about the thirst, the dry and cracked lips, the white tow his hair had become.

Vhagar was his only concern. She was starving. She could not fly too high in the skies. And so, along with all the misery and humiliation, came the dread. For if Vhagar died, the last rope, the last tether, which had perhaps kept him alive up to that point, and perhaps kept her alive, would break.

But then, just as it happens in some book of adventures, or simply in dreams, a mirage, a true oasis in the middle of the desert, surrounded by the highest walls ever built in the history of men, guarding the greatest city that ever was and will be: Qarth.

“Hmm” she ponders, pursing her lips. “I’m not sure about this one. What do you think, Nyla?”

The young maid stops her morning chore and blushes. “I think it would match your skin wonderfully, your Highness.”

She hears giggling behind her shoulders, where two of her most trusted maids are braiding her hair after oiling them with mirrh and cinnamon. “You hear that, Nyla? They’re questioning your candor.”

“I am not, your Highness.” says Dora, one of the giggling girls. “But if you were looking for a less partial opinion, let’s say a more objective one...you should have asked me or Mysha.”

“Well, as it happens, I was looking precisely for a partial opinion. Look at her. She’s changing my chamber pot and still, she thinks that shade of purple would suit me wonderfully. Oh Nyla, I think you will soon become my favorite.”

“Is that a yes then, your Highness?” the merchant wastes no time to ask, standing in the center of the room with silk drapes of several colors resting along his arm.

“Yes, Jorio. Two yards of that purple silk.”

The merchant nods swiftly, too swiftly she notices. The man is acting awkwardly since the moment he stepped into her private rooms. Usually, he’s a big talker, a true born seller. He could make believe one could heal from Greyscale if they just wrap themselves in the soft embrace of his silks. But not today. He seems in a hurry. The exhibition of his goods too quick and excited. And then the sweat, lumped in a wet sheen around his bald head.

“Anything else, your Highness?”

Her forehead creases, acknowledging a thought, new but not quite, as if it has always been there. “Perhaps something green?” she ventures.

“Green?” inquires Misha “That’s a first.”

She shakes her head in a dismissing way. “Must be my father’s sorcery.”

The shadows, kóri, they speak to you.

“What do you have in green, Jorio?”

The merchant fumbles with his silks, a turmoil moves his hands clumsily until a few drapes of fabric flutter on the ground. He stoops to pick them up, only to drop the others still clinging onto his shoulder in a chaotic rainbow of colors on the white marble floor.

“Jorio, what is the matter with you today?”

“I—Nothing, your Highness, my apologies...”

“You know if you have problems with your trades, the Salt King and I would be more than happy to help you.”

“It’s not that—no. Must be all the fuss in town.”

“Pirates again?”

“Uhm—no, it’s the…beast outside the walls.”

“The beast? What beast?”

The man swallows, visibly. “A dragon, your Highness. A huge dragon, higher than the city walls.”

“But…that is not possible...” Misha tries.

“I’m telling what I saw with my own eyes. The Thirteen gathered outside the walls. I saw the Spice King along my way here. He said they were about to parley with the Milk man, see through his reasons.”

"Milk Men don’t ride dragons.” she corrects, standing from the soft cushions piled and spread on the ground. “This man’s hair…what color are they?”

“White as midday sun.”

"Your Highness! Come..."

The Salt Queen joins Dora on one of the brightly sunlit balconies overlooking the Route of Trade. There is indeed a great bustle in the town, a motionless bustle however, gazing with open mouths and bewildered eyes at the small procession moving up the street. The City Guard is leading, with their shields and spears to protect The Thirteen, rulers of the most important trading city in the world. They are all dressed in bright colours and precious jewels embroidered in their silk tunics, hanging from their necks, wrists and fingers.

If she narrows her eyes, The Salt Queen can swear she can see the gold ring her husband wears on his nose. What catches her eye though, is not gold or any other bright color, but black, and then white.

There is a man walking down the street with the thirteen, a tall man with plain dark clothes and a mantle of silver hair, white as midday sun.

“Wife, may I introduce you to our noble guest?”

A woman comes forward to greet him when Aemond enters a lavish hall with several windows adorned with colorful drapes of silk. He is sure he has never seen so much marble in his life, feeling even more inappropriate given the state of his clothes and his whole demeanor, shamefully far from the clean, soldierly appearance that left mouth agape.

“Prince Aemond of House Targaryen, from Westeros.” The Salt King declares as the woman stops just before him. He stands tall and imposing, no matter the misery of his shabby clothes, the state of his disheveled hair falling in silver tangles down his back. He is still a Targaryen, his chin is high and proud.

“More like from the Old Valyria.” She says raising an eyebrow, and sizing him up and down. “He seems to have just emerged from the Doom, miraculously unscathed.”

The Prince does nothing but seethe his teeth behind his dry lips, a distant shame in his eye that quickly turns into a focused and unblinking rage.

“Welcome to Qarth, my Prince. I’d trust your journey was uneventful but…I can see the Red Waste takes its toll, even on Valyrian beauty.”

Aemond takes a good, long look at her, inevitably lingering on her chest, dressed as the common Qartheen fashion dictates: one breast exposed. But a lot more of her is exposed. Her shoulders, her arms and legs, a glimpse of her hips, all crossed by swirling bundles of lilac silk.

If any married woman in Westeros dressed like that in the open, he’s sure any husband would lock her up. At least he would.

“You must excuse my wife, Prince Aemond, or rather, get used to her habit of speaking her mind.”

“Come now, Xavos. Surely Westerosi women can voice their thoughts?” she moves, walking past Aemond and her husband to reach a small table inlaid with gold to pour some greenish beverage into a cup. “I had a maid once, she was from…Rich Garden?”

“High Garden.” He sternly corrects her.

“Ah, yes. A delightful creature, always smelled so good.” She says distractedly “Anyway, she fled from your lands because she liked girls and not boys and she didn’t want to devote her life to being a brood mare sucking a flaccid cock until her hair had gone white.”

Her maids snicker somewhere past Aemond shoulders, stiffening his posture at the liberties those commoners are granted. “I should hope you Westerners listen to your women more than you do your horses.”

Aemond watches as she takes a sip and laces his hands behind, slightly tilting his head for a moment. “Where I come from, women do not possess such a sharp tongue. Furthermore, and fortunately, most of them have manners. They know how to address a Prince of the Realm.”

She turns to leave the cup on the same table and glances at Nyla. “Oh, he bites.”

“This is not Westeros, dragon prince.” She says turning to face him with a righteous smile “I don’t need to ask your permission to speak. The Salt King is my husband, that is why you will hear my maids and everyone else address me as Your Highness. So, you may lower that chin and stop waiting for me to bow down to you because technically my rank is higher than yours. You might say the only one meant to bow in this room were you.”

The silence that follows is so stark that the air the Prince quickly exhales through his nose sounds like thunder, alerting the Salt King. "Come now, wife. Don't wake the beast.” he says lightly, stiffening a smile “And I mean it quite literally. You should see the size of Prince Aemond’s dragon.”

“I heard.” she acknowledges “Jorio said he’s higher than the city walls.”

“She. And twice, than your city walls.” The Prince corrects her again, just as sternly. “She’s the largest dragon alive in the known world.” His chin remains high and haughty, simply because he can. Because she knows he could raze the entire city to the ground just by snapping his fingers. So, she looks down and says “Since you will be our guest, it is my duty as matron of this house to make you feel welcomed. If you would be so kind to follow me, your Grace.” She forces her tone to be as much as corteous, but then she smiles “Is my tongue acceptably sharp to your liking now?”

“Where are you taking me?” he asks as he follows the Salt Queen along one of the corridors, made of the finest marble with high arches of white stone and gold glittering under the midday sun.

“Down and down, to throw you in the dungeons.”

Aemond stalls for a moment and she does the same. “I was joking.”

He gives her that stern, distrustful look she starts to think he has etched on his features since his first wail and huffs. “God, have you lost your humor in the Red Waste?”

She resumes her walking, and Aemond follows, glancing around as they pass through many people, some of them are dressed like maids and servants, some others with long tunics of silk and jewels embroidered in the fabric. They speak to one another, he notices, as equals. But they stop altogether upon seeing a living Valyrian walk among them.

“God?” he asks “Which one?”

“Whichever you want. R'hollor, the Many Faced…I’m not picky. It helps me sleep better at night to know I didn’t dump all my sins on one God only.”

He is sure from his education and his mother’s faith that religion doesn’t work that way, but he has more pressing matters at heart. “Will you meet my requests?”

“About your dragon?” she asks stopping before a large wooden door closed. “Can’t she hunt on her own?”

“In the Red Waste? In these barren lands? Perhaps you should put your pretty head outside the city walls and see with your own eyes how big she is.”

The woman smirks, seizing him up and down and furrows her brows. “You seem very keen on emphasizing how big your dragon is. I should hope it’s not a compensating factor for the lack of something else.”

She pushes the door open, not bothering to wait for Aemond who just stands there for a moment, a little dumbfounded by the salt of which the Queen's tongue seems to be made. His bewilderment is only destined to worsen as he crosses the threshold and looks around.

Right in the middle of the palace, amidst all that marble and white stone, stands a wild courtyard, wild and beautiful in its unspoiled nature. Climbing plants and fruit trees grow undisturbed around a large square pool, decorated with mosaics of a thousand colors, harboring the most crystal-clear water he has ever seen; small clouds of steam rise from the surface, pinching his nostrils with the unmistakable smell of sulfur.

There are people bathing together and, obviously, much to his dismay, naked.

“Do you not take baths in Westeros?” the Salt Queen asks, faking true curiosity at the puzzlement she can read on his face, slowly turning into repugnance as he looks at her with a cutting answer.

“We have decency, in Westeros.”

She does not bother to disguise the long sigh blowing through her lips and then she turns to clap her hands vigorously, three times.

“My friends, apologies for the interruption!” she announces as everyone in the pool and outside turns to look at her “I must ask you to leave the pool for the time being. Our…prude guest demands a little bit of privacy.”

She can feel the Prince glaring but ignores him altogether to stop one of the servants.

“Priya, fetch some oils. And some silks, fitting for a prince.” She turns her head to look at him from head to toe, as if valuing a new drape of silk or a new sculpture to put in the Hall of Trade, but then she creases her forehead, as she often does when knowing. “Blue perhaps? To match the sapphire.”

The constant scowl seems to leave his features and she hears his question before he utters a single word.

“My father is a warlock. Magic runs thick in his blood, he says, as well as in the blood of his blood. Sometimes I sense things, bits of knowledge, and sometimes they happen to be right. But you don’t need to be afra—”

“I’m not afraid of sorcery.” He cuts her, his tone flat, his features stoic as ever and she looks at him, curiously, perhaps wondering what lies behind all that stone.

“Very well. Sapphire blue for Prince Aemond.” his name slips into his ears in a strange, liquorous way; vowels are more open in this part of the world.

When they’re left alone, she signals towards the pool. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

He hesitates for a moment, but it is not as if he has never undressed in front of one of his old servants. And frankly, he is too eager to get those filthy clothes off to be bothered by a foreign woman watching.

He throws everything on the ground without too much care, and she watches without too much shame, because that's not how things go there. Bodies, both male and female, they are not something to hide, but something to be displayed and worshipped.

Her eyes linger on scars, old and new, on a lithe body that once belonged to a prince and a soldier, now marked by misery, dirt and hunger.

“Everything.” she says at one point, when he’s left with only his battered cotton pants on.

Aemond thinks he heard wrong. But she only blinks, keeping her face blank.

“Is this the common way to welcome guests here?” he scorns.

“Actually, it is. At least after the incident with the scorpion.” she doesn’t bother to wait for a question or an eyebrow rising. “My husband’s great grandfather hosted a merchant from Yunkai once. He came here with gifts of all sorts among which was a poisonous scorpion, hidden in his clothes. The old Salt King died but so did the merchant. Fell face down in his chamber pot while taking a piss. Quite ironic, don’t you think? You have to be careful when handling such vicious creatures.”

He only looks at her, and she's the one to raise an eyebrow. “I could turn away if you like.”

Aemond sighs loudly, moving his cutting jaw at the umpteenth humiliation and then lowers his pants. She stares into his eye and surely, surely he thinks, she wouldn’t dare to wander down.

But a moment later her eyes sink past his snatched waist, and she smirks.

“I believe I owe you an apology.”

“What for?”

“Questioning your…natural gifts.”

Aemond blinks, running on the verge between scowling, raising his eyebrows and huffing a laugh. Certainly, it never happened to him to talk so bluntly about his cock with any highborn lady barely met, let alone a supposed queen.

“I’ll leave you to your bath, dragon prince. The Salt King and I have much to discuss.”

“Such as?” he deadpans, not really interested while he dives into the clean water.

“Well, a Targaryen Prince is not an everyday occurrence.” She says following his every move, the way water glides on his skin, silver hair floating on the surface like moonblooms. “We’ll make sure to have a feast worthy of your noble taste this evening.”

“And then talk behind my back about what to do with me?”

“Undoubtedly. And I will tell him the truth.”

“Hmm.” He hums, settling on one of the underwater steps of the pool, resting his shoulders against the rim. His mood instantly improves, so he pins her with his eye and looks her up and down. “Do you believe to know my reasons? You’re quite sure of yourself…your Highness. Unless your father’s sorcery allows you to read minds, I dare say even rather pretentious.”

“I don’t need sorcery to know that you, in the first place, do not know what you’re doing here.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

She sees that chin tilting, lifting with a hint of challenge. And she takes it. She has the truth, and indeed, she doesn’t need sorcery.

“Because Qarth is still standing.”

She gets no answer, just that diffident stern look to which she darts the faintest of smirks and then leaves the pool, under his watchful eye that stays on the door for a moment longer, before he lets his head sink underwater.

The Salt Queen gives instructions for the most sumptuous room to be given to Prince Aemond. She sees to it that he is provided with several silk suits and that food is served to him immediately when he has finished bathing. She has observed his body with pleased eyes, so scrupulously she knows the Prince has not had a decent meal in weeks.

“Did he settle?” Xavos asks when she enters his private room.

“In time, I’m sure he will. Valyrians have an impressive disposition to make their own what does not belong to them, do they not?”

She hears him murmur something in return from where he stands, on the balcony threshold that overlooks the city and its massive port. The Queen sits on a soft armchair and starts to twirl her hair around one finger, curling her mouth into a thoughtful pout. “I was thinking goose for dinner. Or salt beef? We should save goats and pigs for the beast. Apparently, poor thing is starving.”

In the silence that follows, she turns to her husband. “Xavos?”

The Salt King turns with one shoulder and a half-bitter smile. “We have a living threat who could burn us all to the crisp walking within our palace and our city, and you speak to me of geese and pigs?”

“It’s useless to cry over spilled milk. You let him in. You let greed lure you all like a piper with a flute. I’m wondering, on which tune did he make you dance?”

He walks to her with slow feet and looks at her after a long sigh. “Dragon eggs.”

“I should’ve known.”

“Cyril began talking of an opportunity of a lifetime. Of the Greatest City that ever was and will be becoming even greater. Think about it. With dragons…Qarth might become the center of the whole world. A newborn Valyria. If we play our hand right—”

“Quit the fancy words. What exactly are you asking of me, Xavos?”

She knows he is asking for something. She has known him for more than ten years, and he has asked, has demanded, a lot of her. She knows that when his voice drops a note, he wants something, as if whispered, it becomes less degrading.

He trails his index finger on her chin and lifts it. “To make him dance to your tune.”

“You overestimate me, husband. I cannot reason with a tiger when my head is in its mouth. Besides, he might be easy on the eye, but he’s as agreeable as a plant of spikes.”

She speaks smoothly—not a flinch or a blink at her husband's hand sinking between her lilac’s folds, and then between her inner ones. “Since when you are so reluctant about who’s allowed in your bed?”

“Don’t confuse me with yourself.” she says lifting her chin to look at him, unbothered by the circling his finger draws on her dry bundle. “I fuck who I want for pleasure, rarely out of boredom, but never to prove a point.”

Abruptly, he slips his finger deep inside, hurting her. “I should have taken your tongue as well.”

“And still…” she forces a smile over the painful grimace twisting her mouth “it would not have given you what you so desperately seek in every hole.”

His unwanted touch leaves her and he straightens, pacing lazily behind her seat. “He’s young. He’s had a rough time. Surely, he must’ve missed the intimate company of a woman.”

“For that kind of company, there are pleasure houses.”

“Don’t play dumb, now. You saw how proud he is. How do you think he will take it if we send a whore to his rooms?” Xavos grips the back of the chair and leans down slowly, speaking to her ear. “Listen to me. Cyril is right. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We must make him feel…important…coddled, even.”

“Even if you shackle his feet with gold, you cannot turn a dragon into a lamb, Xavos.”

The Salt King sighs impatiently, and his tone drops just as earlier. “Do as I say.”

Young Nyla interrupts her masters as she enters the room, and the Queen turns her head. “Nyla, what is it?”

“We have escorted Prince Aemond to his rooms, your Highness.”

“Good.” Xavos says, and then looks at his wife with a pointed stare. “Make sure he has everything he needs.”

The Salt Queen barges in and halts on the door, bewildered upon seeing her trusted friend Mysha on the verge of tears, staring at the ground as if she’s waiting for an execution.

“My deepest apologies, my Prince, I meant no disrespect.”

“What happened?”

“Uh—Prince Aemond asked for some herbs, your Highness. An ointment, for his eye.”

“Aye. I did ask for that, not for you to fucking touch me.”

The Prince is snarling, his eye wide and menacing like a hound on the brink of defense yet hunting for flesh. His face is clean now, the Queen notices, shaven; his hair is damp and pulled back, leaving his chiseled features, that infuriating chin, and high, prominent cheekbones in plain sight. Stupid as it may sound, she can't help but think of one of those marble sculptures she likes to buy from art dealers.

“You may go, Mysha. I will assist the Prince.”

“I don’t need assistance.” He hisses with threatening calm. “Leave.”

He caved in the pool, but he will not suffer another humiliation in front of these foreigners. At least not with something so delicate and private as his eye. But of course, he realizes with annoyance, this woman will not falter at any of his empty orders.

“Are you dismissing me in my own Palace?”

He looks down, sighing and fuming, and she beckons Misha to leave the room.

“You must understand, servants here are treated differently. They’re granted more liberties.”

“I see. As the ones you so generously grant to slaves.” he mutters, and starts to fidget with a tray offering ginger roots, turmeric powder, and eucalyptus leaves.

“Oh, spare me. Of all people, you Valyrians are the least entitled to give a lecture on morals.” she counters, watching his long, tapered fingers hover without touching anything. Clearly, he was used to servants doing it for him.

“May I?” she offers, but doesn’t wait for his permission to make room next to him. “There are no slaves in this palace.” she tells him "How can you expect loyalty from someone you bought with something as cheap as gold?”

“Cheap as the golden ring your husband has stuck in his nose? He looks like a fucking boar.” he says as his eye trails on her profile.

“My husband is an imbecile. This city did not become the greatest that ever was and will be with gold. Trade is our currency. We call it antallagí. Exchange.”

“A true-born merchant’s wife.”

“Or a boar’s one?”

He huffs, and she turns, feigning shock at the faintest of smirks curling his lips. “So you’re not made of stone after all.”

She studies him for a few moments—more than is deemed proper for a married woman, in Westeros at least—but she can't help it. She wonders how it is possible that exile and moons of misery have not bent this man; what drives that rigid posture, whether it is too strict an education or it is all a lie, masking an effort to keep control, to impose it on others but perhaps more on himself.

“Ointment is ready, your Grace. It may burn a little, ginger is a godsend, but it’s tricky. I could help—”

“I need no help. Leave.”

The stone is in place once more. But she won’t have it.

She raises her eyebrows, biding all the time in the world.

Aemond chews thorns as he looks at her, swallows them, and tastes them again, piercing his tongue. “Please.”

“That must’ve cost you a lot. But it isn’t so hard, is it?”

His lips flatten in a thin line, and she smiles. “You are a second son, are you not? That’s the reason for that stubborn chin. You must stomp your feet to make anything yours.”

“Careful, woman. I’ve taken tongues for far less.”

“Why? Did you not see eye to eye with them?”

He moves like lightning, invading her space until he is a breath away from her face, and his mouth breathes fire. “Listen to me. I care not who the fuck you are or which title you make your slaves call you. I am not here to allow you to make a fool of me, Queen or no Queen. Mock me once more, and I’ll carve the word please on your vicious mouth.”

He waits for the fire to catch on, even though flames do not seem to touch her; she's unwavering and solid as marble.

“Get out.”

“I don’t—” she chokes on her words, on his hand seizing her jaw; cold fingers, leaving embers on her skin.

“I said, get out.”

That evening, the already lavish palace of the Salt King was polished and decked out duly to honor the foreign guest. The walls, lit by braziers of fire, stood like a beacon amidst a sea of marble and white stone roofs. The Hall of Trade was a treasury, crammed so full of gold that it looked like a pirate's dream. Pillows were piled on the floor, long tables held food of all kinds. A huge bowl of wine welcomed the guests, who were given a goblet they had to dip into the large bowl and drink, otherwise they would not be allowed inside. It was tradition, a sort of good omen.

It pinched Aemond's nostrils when he brought the cup to his mouth and, thankfully, drank it in small sips. Despite his prudence, by the second he felt his tongue on fire from how spiced it was. By comparison, Arbor Gold was wastewater.

He wears the sapphire blue silk tunic, with a silk belt cinching his narrow waist, but his hair is different. Mysha learned the lesson she asked, and when he gave his consent, she got to work and braided his silver hair. Most of them are loose, falling down his back in a curtain of white. Others are laced in one, two, three braids, softly meeting at the back of his head.

If he thought the Salt Queen’s hospitality was somewhat a little too forward and a lot more intrusive, he had to reconsider when he found himself cornered as soon as his silver head caught the eye of every guest. Men and women, old and young, flocked to him with eyes full of wonder, as if the Salt King had captured some wild and rare creature and called all his friends to make them look.

But they didn’t just look. They talked openly and freely, voicing thoughts that, in Westeros, would have stayed inside one’s head.

“Look at his hair! They seem like moon rays!”

“And the skin! Whiter than milk!”

“What happened to his eye?”

“If only my wife were here…she always wanted to see a Valyrian!”

He had just gotten there, and his teeth were baring.

“My friends, please! Let our noble guest breathe!” the Salt King chuckles as he comes forward among the bewildered audience, looking like the loot of some theft, for all the gold and diamonds and emeralds sewn on his orange silk tunic. “Come, my Prince. The first taste is yours.”

Aemond catches a movement on his right and there she is, the Salt Queen, in a crimson red sparkling like a bloodied dew given the little, tiny red stones woven in her silks. Her hair coils into an intricate bun crisscrossed by a paper-thin gold chain that crowns her forehead with small, rough rubies, like grains of salt.

For a moment, he’s so enthralled by her figure, and her eyes, even more piercing because of kohl, that he fails to notice the clay plate she’s holding, filled with fruits. Some he has never seen, except in books, but he has no time to take a guess.

“Your first taste, my Prince.” she chimes. “Sweet or tart?”

His gaze falls back to the plate, but not before stopping, again, for a blink, on that absurd fashion of one bare breast. “Tart.” He says tightly.

She smiles, as if she knew, and puts the plate down. Aemond watches her bejeweled fingers pluck off a grape and turn, her hand in midair but not quite outstretched toward him. He nothing but give her a pointed look, one that translates only into a stern and irrevocable I can eat by myself.

“My Prince. My wife means no offense.” the Salt King explains “In Qarth, it is deemed a great honor, given and taken, and an excellent omen for the guest's stay, if said guest is fed by the matron of the house.”

His throat bobs and the Salt Queen can’t quite decipher if the dragon prince is more humiliated or angered by the prospect of being fed by a woman like a baby who just teethed. At last, he sighs and leans in, but her hand withdraws a little, leaving him with his mouth slightly open, stretched forth like a beggar waiting for charity. It is not Aemond who bites the grape, but her who finally, after another straight stare into his eye, lets it drop into his mouth.

The crowd erupts in a cheerful clapping, as does The Salt King who goes to stand just between his wife and the Dragon Prince, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder “You see, Prince Aemond, this is one of the extraordinary gifts of Qartheen women. They know exactly how to hold...and when to let go.”

Aemond does not bother to look at him, he is too absorbed, annoyed and deep down, without him knowing it yet, enticed by the tranquil smile that curls her mouth and at the same time curls his pride, mocks it, strips it bare and outright laughs at it, goading everyone else to do so.

Behold, the pink dread!

“Without further ado, let the feast begin!” The Salt King announces joyfully and in the same moment, a delicate and sweet melody fills the room, while Aemond chews what’s left of that grape, tasting his own bile.

An hour later, Aemond is fuming. Fuming because ruling the most important and influential city in Essos, he should’ve known the Thirteen were aware of everything that went on and was currently going on in the West. Perhaps even more than he knew. Did they know something about his mother?

He banished that thought from his mind just as he trained himself to do in all this damned existence.

They knew about the Dance, they knew about Aegon the Usurper, they knew of Rhaenyra the Cruel, the Storming of the Dragon Pit. They knew the kingdom was dreadfully impoverished and in the hands of a young boy.

But they spoke about it as if they were discussing the weather. Qartheens cared nothing about what was going on outside their impenetrable walls; whether it was a new king on a throne far away or a war that had killed thousands and thousands, it was all tittle-tattle to kill time between one cup of wine and the next. He was asked about this battle or the previous one without thinking that he had lived through that war; he made it, he carried it and perhaps he still carried it within him.

He was fuming for this, he was fuming for how women, and even men, gawk at him, for their bizarre custom of hosting a feast without a decent place to sit and eat like normal people do. He was fuming because no matter how much he tried to ignore it, a spool of crimson would always catch his eye.

Grabbing one more cup of wine, he decides to take a breath outside, standing on one of the marbled balconies of the Palace. Air does good to extinguish his fires, but it does not clear up his mind. Perhaps he should blame the wine, perhaps his head is still smoky.

Because you, in the first place, do not know what you're doing here.

As much as he loathed to admit it, the Salt Queen was right. He tricked himself into thinking the main reason for his coming here was Vhagar. She was weak, due to the wing's injuries as well as the old ones, and most of all, she was hungry. But with the promise of goats and pigs, came the clarity and the knowledge that he had no reason, no plan. He only knew he had leverage—a dreadful leverage made of talons and fire on these merchants and their city. But what to do with it?

He hears voices somewhere near, and once more, crimson pollutes his sight. The Salt Queen and her husband are talking behind a tall white pillar. He can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but she catches his stare almost immediately. The talking ceases, and Aemond knows they were talking about him, of course they were.

Xavos comes out of his hiding place with a placid and benevolent expression, walking right past him without a word. But she stays, and she looks, and then she walks to him.

“That will go to your head.” She warns as he empties the cup “I didn’t see you touch any food.”

The spiced wine burns his throat, makes his tongue sour and impatient. “Is your husband aware of your excessive concern about your guests? Or is it a thoughtfulness he has ordered you to reserve only for me?”

“I’m just being considerate since you’re a foreigner and not well acquainted with Qartheen tastes.”

“How exactly am I supposed to eat? Standing?”

She huffs a laugh and shakes her head trimmed with gold and red as she gives him a bemused, though genuine, look. “Good God, how spoiled you are? I thought misery made men humble, but clearly not men of House Targaryen.”

His jaw moves annoyingly, and he leaves the empty cup on the marble, but he doesn’t let go, holding it by the edges in a white-knuckle grip. She notices it as she leans against the marble, with her back to the city, and gives him a long, inquisitive look. “After all the misery you suffered, I thought you would’ve liked the attention…perhaps you do…perhaps…you want more.”

“Do you ever stop talking?” he asks boringly, and just as sourly, staring at the city.

“I must say, I’ve hosted so many people, from so many different parts of the world, and yet…I’ve never found myself before a face so full of contradictions.”

His eye pins her. “Need I remind you how you left my room earlier?”

“With your hand around my neck, because you couldn’t take a joke.”

“I don’t like being mocked. And I don’t like being played like a pawn. So, unless this is another one of your absurd customs, tell your husband to stop parading you around me like a whore. It looks bad when you insist on others calling you queen.”

“We all play parts, dragon prince. Sometimes, they blend. But in the end…it takes little to know the real you.”

Aemond chokes on his breath as her hand slips between them like water, cupping his crotch with a grip of steel, and fire, burning from her fingertips through the fabric. She holds it like a weapon, and his defense is low. She sees his throat bobbing down once, and twice, rejection curls his mouth, but not strongly enough to shove her hand away, to not start to harden against the flames of her fingers, brushing all his length until she cups it once more.

“Whore or queen?” she whispers, brushing his parted lips “Someone in there doesn’t seem to care.”

His grip on the cup loosens, a tremor runs down his spine, and he dawdles in the sensation, one felt before, elicited by other hands, and yet new. It’s been so long. The surge to touch, to clutch, to taste, drains his head of blood. But she eludes him, tilting her head to the right and then to the left to avoid the vise of his lips; her grip loosens, running the back of her fingers against his cock in a feathery brush, touching without touching.

He grinds his teeth to choke a whimper, but then she’s cupping again; she feels him go completely hard for her, and the knowledge washes over her like tongues of fire prickling down her back and between her thighs. The soft, slippery silk allows her to unleash her lunges more fiercely, to easily close her hand around his cock, and that same silk helps her to glide her hand deliciously up and down.

He's breathing hard, almost panting, brushing the tip of his nose against hers; her eyes are open, basking in the sight, the little twitches of his mouth as bends to pleasure, the breathing turning heavier and heavier, his hand that starts to flex. She imagines how those slender fingers would feel between her folds, how easily they would slip inside, and why, why is he not touching her?

“Do it…” she breathes. “Do you want me to say please? I would…there’s no shame in begging, dragon prince….it only makes you free…”

“Your Highness, my apologies.” Nyla calls her Queen suddenly, and she stops her wicked ministrations, abruptly bringing Aemond back to his senses.

“The Salt King sent me after you.” The young maid says, apparently unfazed by what she clearly witnessed. “We’re playing kottabos.”

"Ah, yes, of course.” she tries to regain some control, although she was panting on the sole anticipation, and goes back inside.

Aemond stalls, taking a long sigh in the fresh air to try to stop the blood from boiling. And he follows.

Kottabos, he discovers, is quite a tricky game. The rules are simple: one has to throw the last drops of wine inside their cup to hit a white plate balanced atop a bronze pole. It requires a bit of dexterity, because the player must put the index finger through the handle of the drinking cup and throw the drops while sprawled on pillows, laying on their elbows.

The Salt Queen, it seems, is quite adept at this game. It takes her only two tries to hit the plate and she’s rising from the pillows, bowing her head to thank the cheerful audience. Aemond's eye bends as the crimson veils bend with her every movement; he slips between them and lets them wrap around him, even though he should not, even though he reproaches himself for letting the blood, the wine, the flesh, that has been starved of other flesh for too long, win.

“My closest friends know I’m very fond of sweets and cakes but…on such a special occasion, I choose a special reward.” She announces when the crowd has quieted down, and before she even turns around, he feels her gaze on him as if she had two more eyes on the back of her head. “A sweeter reward…or perhaps tarter.”

She moves towards him, and every step she takes barefoot on the marble is an unmasking. With every step she takes, it seems to him that she is touching him, as she did just before, and more; he feels like her fingers are slipping under the silk, setting fire to his skin.

She stops in front of him and yet, he still sees her moving, feels her moving like a sea creature and her thousand tentacles of crimson silk.

Maybe he should put the wine down.

Wine is not for you, brother mine, your mind’s too heavy. It’ll soak like a sponge and you'll fall into your own vomit.

What she does not put down is her aim, moving her hands diligently as she grabs his face and draws him close to kiss him on the lips, and tilt her head back to look at him, so close she’s breathing his breath. “This…is your first taste.”

“Good! The Queen has chosen her reward. Let us play another round, shall we?”

Again, Aemond does not bother to look at the Salt King, he looks at her and the faint twitch between her lips at her husband's words.

“Come.” She says taking his hand, and he doesn’t know what drives him to follow her, whether his mind is too soaked, or his flesh is crying out to be fed.

What is certain is that now her bare feet tread the marble of his rooms and he is closing the door.

“I hope you don’t mind if we do it here. I don’t take men into my rooms.”

“Why?”

“I’m jealous of my things.”

“Liar.”

“What?”

“So used to play parts and yet, you look down before lying. Disappointing.”

“I’m surprised you were able to look at anything above my cleavage.”

This time, he lowers his gaze, but not to lie. He knows he has looked, many times, and the excuse of not being used to such a custom starts to creak. She walks up to him and looks at him with that knowing smile that makes him want to clamp his hand on her mouth and wipe it off her face, and maybe stick his fingers inside.

“Are you a virgin, my Prince? Did you have a wife in the West? Children?”

He swallows, and her eyes fall on his throat.

“Is that guilt you just swallowed? Or sorrow?”

“Why don’t you listen to your father’s sorcery while keeping your hole shut?”

“I told you, I am no witch. Qarth is the center of the world. Do you think we don’t know what happens in the East, West, North and South?” she angles her head and whispers in his ear “We know everything… Kinslayer, Terror of the Trident.”

She speaks his war titles in that liquorose way, opening the vowels as if she is casting a spell, but he hears the mockery. It is the same that loosened the tongue at the Strong bastards, the same one perpetuated by Alys. But Alys' mockery was different. She spoke in riddles, visions and flames. This woman speaks in truths.

“Do you regret it?” she whispers, and her tentacles thread their way through the silk “All those innocents you have burned…all the ones you have lost.” lazily, she pulls at the laces of the blue tunic and he stiffens, flaring his nostrils. “See? I don’t need sorcery. The more you stiffen, the more cracks reveal.” She straightens her head to look at him with eyes darker than tar, wandering over his face and he feels branded. “I can see them around you…ghosts…why don’t you set them free?”

“What is your fucking game?” he wants to seethe, but she’s so close to him it comes out as nothing but a hiss.

She smiles again and this time the victory is full. "The game is over, your grace. I won, and you're my reward. I will admit I never had such a pretty one...care to show me that sapphire or are you still keen on playing the prude bashful prince?”

Aemond has no qualms about touching her, grabbing her face with nails digging into her cheeks as he pulls her close, turning her chin to spit anger and all his tumbled restraints into her ear “Perhaps I should shove my cock into your mouth to make you shut it, hmm? Is that what you want? What your husband wants? That I fuck you like a whore?”

She stiffens, thrashing in his hold that she may not have expected, and manages to turn her head just enough to look at him, scoffing. “Is this the only way you know to use your hands?”

A taunt, another one. It turns his eye pitch black and he leans closer to her lips, almost baring his teeth, almost as if he wants to bite the words—the mockery, the victory—off her mouth. But once more, she eludes him, tilting back and so, any reason burns and dies into his head.

“D’you want to play games, don’t you? Let’s play, then.”

Still gripping her cheeks, he roughly pushes her into the room, letting her go for only one fleeting instant of freedom, just long enough to grab her shoulders and force her to turn around. A gasp escapes her lips, but the next moment she’s bending on the table, he’s forcing her to. A thrill spills into her blood, making her insides clench with anticipation, and dread.

He traps her, planting his feet between hers to stop her from closing her legs. She tries to pull herself up with her back, but he scowls, pushing her head down to keep it firmly glued to the table. She whines as his long fingers pull at her hair, tearing the gold and red chain off, and she can hear him fumbling with the silks, the other hand hiking her crimson gowns up.

“My Prince, please—”

“Begging already?” snarling, he spits into his palm and gives a few quick tugs to his cock, hard and aching “I wonder who’s coming from. The whore or the Queen. Either way, you’ll get your reward, your Highness.”

“Wait—” she whimpers as she feels the head of his cock teasing against her folds, something coils in her belly, and something else, something cold, grips her heart. “Not like th—”

She chokes on her tongue as he slips inside her, easily but painfully, all the way in. Hissing, his hold on her hair tightens, a coarse exhale coming out of his parted lips as he adjusts to her walls, hot and wet, but tense. She’s tensing all over.

“Why are you fighting me?” he pulls her up by the hair, leaning his face close to hers “You wanted this, did you not? You have been teasing and mocking me since I set foot in here.”

“I—”

“No. I’ve had enough of your talks and taunts. Here’s what’s going to happen, whore queen. You will keep quiet and take it. And if I want to fuck you again later, I will. You are not in charge here—not you, not your husband, not all the fucking Thirteen. So don’t fucking push me, unless you want to die with fire skinning you alive.”

Without too much grace, he forces her back on the table and starts a relentless pace, fisting the crimson fabric and pulling to keep her low back flushed to his crotch. His pants mix with flesh slapping harder and faster as he tries to pour on her, and into her, the grief and rage, the misery and fire he’s made of. She writhes beneath him, arching and crumpling against the wooden with violent gasps; she feels like burning but inside, she’s torn in two.

She clamps her hand on the wood to grab onto something, just like that evening. She feels her, and his, arousal coating her thighs, just as blood did that evening.

The little girl wants to run, but the Salt Queen doesn’t want him to stop.

She’s sinking in her mind, but burning in every corner of her body and soul.

She can only moan, her mouth agape and dry, leaking saliva on the surface as her head bounces at each wild rut, hitting that inner spot over and over.

“Look at you, hmm?” he taunts her with purpose, perhaps vengeance “Fucked so good she lost her wits.”

Look at you, little whore. Bet you like it, eh?

Squeezing her eyes shut, she finds a raw voice hidden somewhere. “Harder—”

“What?” he slurs with a heavy-lidded eye, the braids are almost loose, dangling on his face at each thrust.

“Harder—” she pleads with her eyes still shut.

“Greedy wanton thing—” hips start to snap brutally, in a hurtful way, just as she wants, even if it’s hard to even breathe. Pleasure overwhelms her, drives her up towards the peak. But she finds she cannot climb; her mind is holding her down.

He grunts with each snap and curses in some foreign language she’s not aware of, and she doesn’t care; she’s too focused on letting herself burn. But it’s like sitting in front of a fire and barely feeling the flames.

And then his hips jolt faster, once, twice, and he halts, gripping her hips firmly, coming inside her with a long, satiated groan.

Completely spent, he slumps on top of her, resting his head on her shoulder blades to catch his breath. However, she is quick to slip from the scorching alcove, to slide out the door with her mind drowned but her heart pounding out of her chest.

"Your Highness!" Dora wakes from her slumber, and reaches for her Queen.

"Nothing, Dora." she says in a voice still hoarse, almost scratching. "Draw me a bath, please. And fetch mint and wormwood." Moon tea.

She starts to undo her silks and feels a distant smell of smoke sticking to her skin. Like one who has bathed in fire.

The morning after brings no clarity, because truthfully, Aemond does not need clarity. Everything is drastically simple. He is no coward. However his mind was less clear than usual, he could never blame wine for how he behaved a few hours earlier. And why would he?

Whether she was acting on her husband’s orders or not, she wanted him. And he wanted her. He could concede that he'd acted in a harsher way than usual, that he’d let rage and grief guide his purpose. It was not the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. But it all worked in his favor. A demonstration, a shift in whatever power game the Salt King and the other merchant Kings thought to play out. He only made it clear that he was not some precious pet to be coddled and ridiculed.

She had teased and mocked him at any occurrence. He’d only showed her the price of playing with fire.

His blue silks are fresh and clean when he sits down to have breakfast with Xavos; his long silver hair is tied up in a single low braid that starts from the center of his head and gathers lazily down his shoulder.

He has yet to get used to this strange Qartheen custom of sitting on pillows to eat; at least, however, he regains his appetite when he is served dishes once familiar to him, and less exotic.

"I took the liberty of having you prepare a breakfast akin to your old habits.” Xavos says chewing bread with olives “Ham, cheese, venison. And we have fresh fish every day. Blessed be the trades."

The Prince is sincerely grateful, though he would be a lot more grateful if the Salt King were able to shut his mouth when the sun is not even high in the sky. He goes on and on about the supposed trades, and then about the salt he so proudly sells to every corner of the world. He is just about to go on another monologue about the Thirteen and their hopeful wish to receive the Dragon Prince in their Palaces when he stops, frowning at the young maid clearing the place set next to the king. “What are you doing?”

“Apologies, Your Highness, but the Queen will not attend breakfast. She feels indisposed this morning.”

Immediately, Aemond glances up at her and she’s brave enough to hold it for a bunch of seconds before looking down and making her way to the door.

“Maid?”

She halts upon hearing the Prince and turns around.

“Tell your Queen I was promised something. She said she would see to it personally. And I expect her to keep her word.”

“Yes, your Grace.”

“Wait.” he stops her again, his tone almost bored, and slips a hand into the folds of his blue silks, pulling out a gold and red chain. “Take this. She left it in my room last night.”

He throws the jewel on the table and resumes his knife and fork, not bothering to look at anyone, certainly not at the Salt King who is indeed looking at him, looking as pleased as ever, like the cat that caught the mouse.

The Salt Queen did not in fact forget her word. She promised him she would see to Vhagar’s condition, ordering to save goats and pigs to feed the beast, put them on carts and send someone with the Prince to reach the desert, where the dragon was resting.

However, she should've probably assumed that such an apparently simple task would've turned out to be a lot harder to carry out.

She’s just about to finish her late breakfast with Mysha and Dora, when Nyla breaks into the parlor with quick feet.

“Your Highness—uhm—Prince Aemond is at the door, he asks to be received.”

“What is it now? He doesn’t like how the sun rises here?”

Mysha and Dora giggle, but the Queen stays serious and turns to Nyla. “Tell the Prince he will have to wait. I am sure that even in Westeros, barging in during meals stands for bad manners.”

Nyla leaves, but it’s with even quicker feet that she returns to her Queen in barely a minute.

“My Queen, Prince Aemond is quite adamant on being received immediately. He…also says that…keeping guests at the door is a synonym of bad manners in Westeros, as he is sure, anywhere else in the world.”

Tapping her fingers on the table, it takes her a minute to sigh loudly and stand up, throwing the kerchief on the table.

“My Prince.” She greets him as she stops at the door.

In his usual soldierly stance, he looks past her for a moment before locking her blank gaze. “Still adamant on not letting me in?”

“You were not that drunk last night. I believe you heard me just fine when I told you I don’t take men into my rooms.”

“Hmm. But you did take me, and quite eagerly, if memory serves me right. Are we not past such formalities?”

“Gloating like some common man is not very royal of you, your Grace—"

“Tis’ not gloating. And I might say, not very royal of you either to beg me to fuck you harder, your Highness.”

“You’re right. Fucked me so good I didn’t come.”

The proud mischievous smile that kept stretching his mouth vanishes in a blink, and she has to sigh to stifle her own. “What is it, my Prince?”

“You gave me your word.”

“Indeed. And I kept it. What is your complaint now?”

“Your slaves refuse to escort me in the desert.”

“Well, I can’t blame them. Can’t you feed your dragon on your own? Or are you too humiliated by the prospect of carrying a cart of dead pigs?”

From the way he is staring at her, and having already tickled his pride when the sun is not yet high in the sky, she knows he will not yield on this matter.

“Fine. I’ll go with you.”

“My Queen, it is not safe.”

“Do not worry, Dora. I’ll take the Sorrowful Men.”

Aemond almost laughs to himself as he stands on the left edge of an enclosed inner courtyard of the palace, resembling the training yards of Westeros. There are men intent on training with spears and swords, dressed in strange uniforms made of blue drapes and a strange golden mask on their faces. The carving makes the mask weeping, with a single tear embossed on the gold.

Aemond has no idea how they can see, as there seem to be no holes in those eyes of gold. But his gaze returns at once to the Salt Queen, talking to one of those men, with a large turban on his head. Some kind of commander, he assumes.

He bows to her and then six of these mysterious men march forward and surround the woman.

The Prince glances at each one of them, standing tall and proud as ever with his hands laced behind, seeming unperturbed by these safety measures. In fact, he says “Truly there’s no need to trouble these men, your Highness. What do you expect me to do? Feed you to Vhagar as soon as we are in the desert?”

“These men are not a safety measure for me, but for you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. To prevent you from having certain…Targaryen ideas.”

“Six armed men against the largest living dragon seems like a somewhat unequal battle.”

Narrowing her eyes, she watches as the same placid arrogance bathes his features, but she thinks now it’s the right time to wipe it off, and she knows exactly how to do it. “Sorrows bring sorrows.”

All at once, the Sorrowful men move, drawing their spears with impressive speed and aiming the sharp points at the prince. His whole demeanor changes, becomes menacing, she notices, but he does not flinch. She walks among the weeping men avoiding the spears until she stands in front of the prince and snatches the mask off his face, to wear it herself.

“Listen to me. These men live to serve me. They were slaves once, bought with something far more valuable than gold: freedom. And they chose to stay by my side. If I told them to take the only eye you have left, right now, they would do it. If I told them to cut your cock and bring it to me right now, they would do it. A shame, I will grant you that. So, you’re right, you may be in charge here…but if you push me…you will be dead before you have the chance to say Dracarys.”

Whatever cutting remark the prince has in mind, he does not have time to say it, as he is suddenly distracted by a strange sound, a whistle, like the cry of a bird.

Aemond turns his head and the Queen does the same, recognizing that sound at once. The Sorrowful Men lower their spears and a man steps forward, dressed in a strange purple robe. Aemond stares at him warily, wondering why, in the name of the Seven, this man’s lips are blue, like a corpse.

“Father…” the Salt Queen greets him, taking Aemond by surprise, but sounding a little surprised herself to see the blue-lipped man.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t answer to his daughter, because he can’t. He starts to move his hands in strange signs, circles and lines. And Aemond is grateful for his strict education, for he knows what that man is doing. Sign language. He is either mute, or tongueless.

Unfortunately, he cannot understand what he’s saying, but his daughter can.

“Kóri. Will you not introduce me to your noble guest?”

The Salt Queen sighs, casting a brief look at the Prince, and then she introduces him. “Father, this is Prince Aemond, of House Targaryen.”

The blue-lipped man looks at him with wide eyes, charmed to the point of looking unsettling. And then he bends into a long bow. Not even when Aemond sat on the Iron Throne, someone had bowed so low before him.

He tilts his chin down to greet him, and sees the warlock’s hands moving. “On behalf of the Warlocks of Qarth” the Salt Queen translates “I welcome you, your Grace. It is a great privilege to see a descendant of Old Valyria in the flesh. Your blood is as ancient as our beloved great city.”

Aemond cannot stop his eyebrow from raising, nor his tongue. “It seems at least one member of your family knows good manners.”

“You must excuse us, father, we have to go.” she hastens to say, but as soon as she takes one step, her father grabs her arm.

“Don’t run from me, kori. You have been knowing, yes? More than usual.” and then his hands rise and fall once more. “Trees wail. Leaves are bleeding. The doom, kori. The doom is near.”

PART 2

thank you so so much for reading!! 💕 💕

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brunchable · 3 months ago

Text

Winter King, Part Two : I Wish You Would. . .

Pairings: King AU Bucky Barnes x Out of place Queen Reader Words: 18K Themes: Royaltycore AU, love and power, Arranged Marriage, georgian/regency era misogyny, Eventual Smut. Summary: The Kingdom's court is treacherous, and enemies lurk in the shadows, waiting to exploit any sign of weakness. Althought Y/N is determined to be a worthy queen of the crown, she find out that The King is as elusive as he is captivating. A/N: Inspired by Queen Charlotte. Also, if you like Sharon Carter, I'm sorry, someone needs to be an antagonist lmao. I hope I tagged everyone.

Tags: @theendofthematerialgworl @httpb3a @spiidergirlsworld @sebastians-love @stevesbbgorl

@targaryenhues @almosttoopizza @scott-loki-barnes @brckenmemories @vicmc624

The clinking of delicate china sounded in the sunroom, but the undercurrent of hostility was unmistakable. Sharon and Leah exchanged a glance, their eyes gleaming with something far more sinister than polite conversation. The warmth of the sun couldn’t reach you through the tension coiling around the table.

Sharon’s voice sliced through the moment, sweet but sharp, as though testing the blade before delivering the cut. “You know, Princess, there’s a rather fascinating story about His Majesty. It surprises me that no one has mentioned it to you yet.”

Your grip tightened on the teacup, but you kept a calm facade. Their words were like needles, pricking at your composure, but you wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you uneasy.

“Oh?” you replied, your tone light, “Do enlighten me.”

Leah leaned in slightly, lowering her voice as though sharing a secret meant only for your ears. “Well, it’s said that he was quite... entangled with Lady Maria for some time. You know how close they were? Practically inseparable.” She shot you a look that made your stomach tighten. “Of course, that was before you.”

The name Lady Maria was familiar to you, but the way they spoke it—like a weapon—made it clear they intended to lodge it in your heart, to make you doubt.

“Oh, I see,” you said, carefully placing the teacup down, though you could feel the prickle of unease beneath your skin. “Is this the same Lady Maris who now resides in the countryside?” You smiled, a sharp edge to your words. “Quite the distance from the palace, wouldn’t you say?”

Leah’s smile faltered ever so slightly, but Sharon’s eyes glittered with cruel amusement as she picked up the thread of the conversation. “Distance means little when it comes to passion. And His Majesty isn’t the type to forget such things... so easily.”

The insinuation in her words cut deeper than you wanted to admit. You could feel your composure slipping, the words sinking into your chest like stones.

You met Sharon’s gaze squarely, keeping your tone even. “I find that real passion leaves no room for doubt,” you said smoothly, “nor for ghosts of the past.”

Sharon’s lips curved into a smile, “Of course, but the past has a way of... lingering, doesn’t it? Men like His Majesty—they tend to crave excitement. And I imagine keeping his interest will be... challenging.”

The implication hit its mark, a knot of jealousy tightening in your chest. They wanted you to believe you couldn’t hold Jame’s attention—that you were nothing more than a placeholder for someone more exciting, someone like Lady Maria.

Your breath caught, but you forced yourself to smile, lifting your teacup as if you hadn’t just been struck by their words. “I find that security comes from understanding,” you said, “And I’m more interested in the present than the past.”

Leah chuckled softly, leaning in closer. “Oh, but the present can be just as... tricky. After all, there are so many... distractions in the palace. You haven’t known him for very long, have you? So much is still hidden.”

Her words felt like poison, seeping into your mind, whispering the doubts you had been trying so hard to push away. Do you really know him? Can you trust him?

But you refused to let them see you falter. You couldn’t. Not when they were so clearly enjoying the game.

“Everyone has their secrets,” you replied calmly, though the weight of those secrets pressed down on you. “But I’ve learned not to rely on gossip to understand someone.”

Sharon’s eyes gleamed, her smile growing. “But don’t you wonder? All those nights he slipped away. Who knows where he went? Or who he was meeting under the moonlight?”

Your heart clenched, the insinuation sharp as a dagger. You could feel the cold tendrils of doubt creeping into your mind, wrapping around your thoughts. Was James still slipping away at night? Was there more he wasn’t telling you?

But you couldn’t let them see that doubt. You had come too far to let their words unravel you.

“I’m sure there are many stories about Prince James,” you said, your voice remained calm, though each word felt heavier now. “But I trust what I know, not what others choose to speculate about.”

Leah’s smile was thin, but her eyes sparkled with triumph, as though she sensed she had struck a nerve. “We’ll see soon enough, won’t we? After all, the wedding is tomorrow. Then we’ll all know whether you can... keep up.”

The words lingered, a challenge woven into every syllable. They were waiting for you to fail, to prove that you weren’t strong enough for this world, for him.

Your pulse raced, the pressure of their words settling like a weight on your chest, but you refused to let it break you. Slowly, you set your teacup down with a soft clink, meeting Sharon’s gaze one last time.

“I’ve faced many tests in my life,” you said, your voice low, but firm. “And I’m still here. I think that says enough.”

The tension hung thick in the air, you rose from your seat, the finality in your movement punctuating the moment. You had given them no ground, no cracks to exploit, and their smiles, once sharp and mocking, now seemed to falter, ever so slightly.

But just as you turned to leave, Sharon’s voice—smooth and saccharine—floated after you, stopping you in your tracks.

“It’s admirable, really, that someone from... Zienna is so resilient. I suppose growing up in such a small, modest country must have prepared you for all sorts of challenges.”

You froze, your hand pausing on the back of the chair. The underlying disdain in her tone wasn’t lost on you. Zienna, your home, was renowned for its beauty, but in the grander scheme of royal politics, it was often dismissed as insignificant. You could feel the mockery laced in her words, as if she were implying that your upbringing had made you desperate to prove yourself.

Leah’s laughter was light, airy. “Oh yes, Sharon. I imagine life there must have been... quaint. So very different from here, don’t you think, Princess?”

You turned slowly, meeting both of their gazes, your own smile never wavering.

“You’re right. Zienna is different,” you said softly, letting the pride in your voice fill the room. “It’s a place where strength is measured by character, not status. Where beauty is in the resilience of the people, not the grandeur of a palace.”

Your words silenced them, the smile slipping from Sharon’s face. Leah’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though she hadn’t expected you to turn their words around so effortlessly.

“And if growing up there has prepared me for anything,” you continued, your voice steel beneath the sweetness, “it’s how to recognize empty words and empty hearts.” You paused, letting the weight of your gaze linger on them. “Qualities I can spot a mile away.”

The sunroom felt colder now, your retort hanging in the air like a cloud. Sharon’s lips pressed into a thin line, but she didn’t respond. Leah shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her earlier smugness evaporating.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” you said, a polite smile on your lips that didn’t reach your eyes, “I have preparations to attend to.”

And with that, you turned on your heel, leaving them behind. Each step you took away from the sunroom felt like a small victory, but even as you walked, their words echoed in your mind. The whispers of Lady Maria, the insinuations about James’s loyalty, the insults directed at your homeland—they lingered, swirling together into a storm of doubt.

As soon as you were out of sight, the carefully composed expression you had worn in the sunroom dissolved. Your lips pressed into a thin line, and with a sudden surge of frustration, you stomped away, your footsteps heavier. The garden path crunched beneath your shoes as you strode forward, the crisp air doing little to cool the heated emotions roiling inside you.

Your maids hurried behind you, their footsteps quick and uncertain as they struggled to keep pace. The sun was bright but dipped lower, casting long shadows over the carefully manicured hedges, but none of it registered in your mind.

You stormed past the familiar stone wall—the very one you had once tried to climb, desperate for an escape from this life. A fleeting memory of that morning flashed in your mind, but you quickly whipped your attention forward, determined not to linger on what felt like another lifetime ago.

The sting of Sharon and Leah's words echoed in your thoughts, the insinuations they had dropped like poison slowly seeping through your veins. The worst part wasn’t their cruelty—it was the lingering doubt they left in their wake, the nagging feeling of inadequacy they had sown in your heart.

As you rounded the corner of the garden, you nearly collided with Captain Rogers. You froze for a moment, caught off guard by his presence. His tall frame blocked your path, and you looked up to meet the eyes of the man you had only seen from a distance—a legend in his own right, but unfamiliar to you until now.

“Princess,” his deep voice said, the faintest hint of surprise in his eyes. He stepped back, his posture respectful, but his gaze lingered on you, as if trying to piece together the storm that was painted across your face.

You drew in a breath. His broad shoulders seemed to fill the space, the strength behind his calm gaze only adding to the silent authority he carried. This was the first time he had seen you up close—really seen you—and you could feel his curiosity. His gaze was far too perceptive, as though he could sense the frustration crackling beneath your surface.

He didn’t move, his eyes scanning your face, taking in every detail—the tightness around your lips, the tension in your posture.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he said, his tone gentler now, “I didn’t mean to startle you. Is everything... all right?”

You hesitated. There was something in his voice—genuine concern, but also a strength, as though he was someone who wasn’t easily swayed by the petty games of court. The temptation to unload your frustration rose, but you bit it back, unwilling to show any weakness in front of someone you barely knew.

Behind you, faint whispers and barely contained giggles from the maids floated through the air.

“He’s even more handsome up close.”

“I heard he’s unmatched with the sword.”

“I wonder if the princess is the one who’s caught his eye.”

Their words blended together, stoking the embers of your growing frustration. You shot them a glance, and the group immediately fell silent, though the sparkle in their eyes remained, a few of them nudging each other playfully.

“Captain Rogers,” you repeated, forcing your attention back to him. His eyes flickered past you, noticing the commotion, but he merely smiled, almost as if he was used to the admiration.

"Apologies," he added with a subtle nod toward the flustered maids. "It seems I've become quite the spectacle." His lips quirked in a brief, amused smile before his gaze settled back on you, serious once again. "But that doesn't matter. Is everything truly all right, Princess?"

Your chest tightened. For a moment, the warmth in his eyes threatened to melt the wall you'd built, but you steeled yourself, unwilling to let anyone—especially James’s dear friend—see the cracks.

“Just taking some air,” you replied, attempting to sound indifferent, but your words wavered, betraying a hint of the emotional storm that raged inside you.

Captain Rogers didn’t move, his gaze softening. “It doesn’t seem like the air is doing much to help,” he observed quietly, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

The subtle warmth in his tone took you by surprise, pulling you from the haze of your own thoughts. It was the first time someone had spoken to you without a layer of formality, without some hidden agenda woven into their words. You weren’t sure if it was refreshing or irritating.

“Well,” you said, lifting your chin slightly, “hence why I’m going inside.”

He stepped aside then, giving you room to pass, but not before his gaze lingered on you one last time, as though he were trying to understand what had unsettled you so deeply. There was no judgment in his eyes—only curiosity.

You nodded curtly in thanks and strode past him, determined not to let him see the cracks in your composure. But even as you walked away, you could feel his presence behind you, as if he were still watching, trying to figure out the puzzle you hadn’t realized you’d become.

Your rest of your maids caught up as you reached the palace doors, their hurried whispers behind you barely registering. You walked past the towering columns and through the grand foyer, a figure appeared ahead of you—a palace staff member—your valet—his uniform crisp and formal. He looked as though he'd been searching for you, his eyes lighting up with relief the moment they landed on you.

“Ah! Princess,” he said, his voice polite but hurried, his slight bow both respectful and urgent. “I’ve been looking for you. Please, follow me—your fitting for the wedding dress is ready.”

You blinked, your frustrations from the sunroom now mixing with a new surge of nerves. The wedding dress fitting. Another reminder of how close the ceremony was—how close you were to stepping into a role you weren’t sure you were ready for. But there was no time to dwell on that now.

You nodded, giving a small, composed smile, though inside, your thoughts still raced. “Of course. Lead the way.”

Scott straightened and gestured down the hall, his steps brisk as you fell in behind him.

× × × ×

The fabric of the gown rustled as the maids adjusted the delicate lace at your sleeves, each stitch tightening like the invisible binds that held you in place. It wasn’t the dress constricting you—it was everything. The ceremony, the expectations… him.

James had become more of a shadow in your life than a man. You hadn’t seen him properly since that morning in the garden, where the flicker of connection between you felt like something precious, something fragile. Since then, you’d only glimpsed him—his tall figure at the coronation, his back turned to you, always just out of reach. And yet, the memory of his touch, the sparkle in his eyes as he teased you, lingered in your thoughts, whispering promises that felt as intangible as smoke.

But promises were thin when matched against the reality of your situation.

Your fingers fidgeted with the silk of your gown as another seamstress knelt at your feet, adjusting the hem. The fabric was exquisite, shimmering beneath the light, but it felt like a gilded cage.

Lady Monica Rambeau circled you, her sharp eyes missing nothing, her presence as unyielding as the steel boning of your corset. She had been assigned to you since the engagement had been announced, her demeanor polite but impenetrable. No matter how hard you tried, you could not pierce the veil of formalities that cloaked her every word.

As Lady Rambeau came around the front of the gown, you cleared your throat, trying to keep your tone light, though the questions weighed heavily on your mind. “Lady Rambeau, I’ve noticed something.”

Her fingers stilled as she pinched a piece of fabric at your waist. “Hm?”

You hesitated, watching her closely. “The King… he always wears a glove on his left hand.”

Lady Rambeau didn’t flinch, but there was the slightest pause in her movements, the briefest tightening of her lips. You had been trained to notice such things.

“Yes, Princess,” she said, her tone smooth, but you caught the subtle shift in her expression. “Many royals have their eccentricities.”

You narrowed your eyes, not satisfied with her evasive response. “It seems more than just an eccentricity, doesn’t it?”

For the first time, Lady Rambeau’s gaze met yours directly, a flicker of something—was it pity?—in her eyes. “The prince prefers not to discuss such matters. It is... a personal choice.”

You straightened your back, feeling the frustration coil tighter inside you. You were about to marry him, and yet everyone seemed to know more about your future husband than you did.

“A personal choice that no one seems willing to explain,” you countered, your voice sharp. “I’m about to marry him. Don’t I deserve to know the truth?”

There was a beat of silence before Lady Rambeau averted her gaze, focusing on the gown again. “Some truths, Princess, are best left for the prince to share himself.”

Her words landed heavily in the room, closing the conversation with an air of finality. You clenched your fists, feeling the fabric of your gown bunch beneath your fingers, the weight of everything pressing down on you like the tight bodice of this perfect, suffocating dress.

“Perhaps,” you muttered under your breath, “but a queen who knows nothing of her king is little more than a pawn.”

Lady Rambeau’s lips tightened again, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she straightened, her expression smoothing back into its usual calm, controlled mask.

“The gown is perfect,” she said, her voice cool. “You will be the vision of a queen.”

You stared at her, your frustration simmering.

“A vision,” you repeated softly, looking at your reflection in the mirror. The girl staring back at you wore a gown fit for a queen, but there was something hollow in her eyes. The truth was, you felt like an imposter in that mirror. How could you marry a man who remained an enigma, hidden behind secrets no one would speak of?

Lady Rambeau cleared her throat, sensing your thoughts. “Before we conclude, Princess, we must review the schedule for the day.”

You raised an eyebrow but didn’t protest. Not yet, anyway. “Of course.”

Lady Rambeau reached for the small ledger on the table, flipping through the neatly written notes. “This afternoon, after we’ve finalized the details of your gown, there will be a brief... educational session.”

You blinked, caught off guard. “Educational session?”

Her voice was smooth, unflappable. “Yes, Princess. It is customary for brides of your station to receive instruction on matters... related to the marriage bed.”

Heat rushed to your face, and the room suddenly felt stifling. “I—what kind of instruction?”

Lady Rambeau, as always, didn’t blink. “There will be materials provided. Diagrams, illustrations. You’ll be prepared for what is expected of you.”

The air in the room seemed to thicken, and you fought the urge to pull at the bodice of your gown. This wasn’t just a wedding—it was the beginning of something far more daunting, far more real. And you were expected to step into it without hesitation, without question.

Lady Rambeau seemed to sense your discomfort but pressed forward. “Afterward, there will be time for rest before your private dinner with His Majesty.”

Your pulse quickened. The first private moment with James since that morning in the garden. You hadn’t been alone with him since. You hadn’t seen him up close, hadn’t had the chance to ask the questions that had been building inside you.

“A private dinner?” you repeated, trying to shake the thoughts of the diagrams, of everything that seemed to loom on the horizon.

“Yes,” she confirmed, her voice unwavering. “It will be your final opportunity to speak with His Majesty before the ceremony tomorrow.”

You swallowed hard. Final opportunity. The phrase echoed in your mind like a warning. This was your last chance to confront him, to ask about the glove, about the rumors, about everything you had been kept in the dark about.

You nodded slowly. “I see.”

Lady Rambeau closed her ledger with a faint snap, offering a thin smile. “Everything is in place for tomorrow, Princess. You need only focus on your duties as queen.”

Duties. Expectations. Those were the words that seemed to follow you everywhere. But what about your fears? What about the truth? What about the man you were about to spend your life with?

You swallowed the frustration rising in your throat and nodded. “Very well.”

Lady Rambeau’s expression softened ever so slightly, perhaps sensing your internal turmoil. “Is there anything else, Princess?”

For a moment, the bitterness from the morning tea bubbled back to the surface, and you found yourself saying, “Actually, yes. Are there... any other ladies I can spend time with? The morning tea with Lady Sharon and Lady Leah left a rather bitter taste in my mouth.”

Lady Rambeau’s lips twitched, the barest hint of amusement crossing her face before she masked it once more. “I see. I can certainly arrange for you to meet with a more agreeable company.”

A small sigh of relief escaped you. “Thank you. That would be much appreciated.”

With a nod, Lady Rambeau offered a brief, genuine smile. “Consider it done, Princess.”

× × × ×

You sat in an ornate chair, stiff and uncomfortable, while across from you, the Governess stood like a sentinel, her stern expression and ramrod-straight posture making the space feel even more intimidating.

Your eyes flickered nervously to the stack of leather-bound books on the table between you, each one larger and more foreboding than the last. Then there was the parchment—rolled up, but ominous in its stillness. There was something about the entire scene that made your skin crawl, as though you were not here for a lesson but being led into battle.

“Princess,” the governess began, her tone clipped and authoritative, “this session is essential to your role as the future queen and wife. It is vital that you understand the... expectations that will be placed upon you in the marriage bed.”

You found yourself shifting uncomfortably in your seat. Your hands gripped the armrests, trying to hold on to a semblance of composure. But there was nothing composed about this moment, nothing regal about what was happening.

The governess pulled one of the books from the pile and flipped it open, revealing a diagram that made your stomach turn. The lines, the shapes—they were clinical, and yet, utterly mortifying. You felt heat rising in your face, and it took everything in you not to roll your eyes. The absurdity of the situation made you want to laugh, but you bit down on the impulse, hard.

“This,” the governess continued, her voice as sharp as her gaze, “is crucial knowledge for fulfilling your wifely duties. You must be prepared to consummate the marriage.”

You swallowed hard, shifting again, the lesson settling over you like an iron cloak. “I think I understand the general concept,” you muttered, trying to keep your tone light despite the tight knot of discomfort twisting in your gut.

She ignored your attempt at levity, her movements precise as she unfurled the parchment on the table. It revealed even more intricate—and mortifying—illustrations. Your eyes widened in disbelief as you stared at the detailed depictions, each one meticulously labeled as though this were a scientific experiment and not the intimate realities of your future.

You blinked, your heart pounding faster, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of your neck. This can’t be happening.

“Pay attention, Princess,” the governess said sharply, noticing your wandering gaze. “This knowledge is essential. You must understand your role—how to fulfill your responsibilities as a wife.”

Your patience snapped. You could no longer hold back the bubbling frustration.

“My role?” you echoed, gesturing toward the diagrams with a wave of your hand. “You mean my role as a willing participant in this?”

The governess’ eyes narrowed, her back straightening further, if that were even possible. “Princess, this is not a matter to be taken lightly. The consummation of your marriage is not only expected, but required. You must take your duty seriously.”

A snort escaped you before you could stop it. The absurdity of it all—the coldness, the diagrams, the formality of something so intimate—was overwhelming. You hadn’t seen James in days, hadn’t even spoken more than a few proper words to him, and here you were, being lectured on consummation because it was a royal decree.

“I haven’t even had a proper conversation with the man,” you blurted out, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. “How am I supposed to take this seriously?”

The governess’ gaze turned icy, her lips thinning into a disapproving line. “Princess,” she began, sounding a bit disappointed, “you may find this situation amusing, but let me remind you—this is no laughing matter. As queen, it is your duty to provide heirs. That cannot happen if you do not fulfill your responsibilities to His Majesty.”

The levity you had clung to vanished, replaced by something far darker, far more suffocating.

Heirs.

This wasn’t just about duty anymore. It wasn’t about vague responsibilities or distant expectations. This was real. This was your future—your life.

“So,” She cleared her throat noticing the change in your demeanor, “If you don’t want His Majesty to find a consort willing to provide him an heir, I suggest you listen and learn carefully.”

The room suddenly felt too small, the air too thick. You tried to even out your breathing, but the panic clawing at your chest made it difficult to think, difficult to even breathe. You were no longer the girl standing in the garden, teased by a prince about escaping. You were a woman facing the stark reality of a role that felt far too large for you.

Your heart pounded in your ears as the governess’s cold, unrelenting gaze bored into you. She wasn’t just speaking of abstract duties or obligations. This was real, and you had no escape.

“I... I understand,” you whispered, though the words felt hollow.

“Do you?” the governess asked, her tone softer now, but still cold with authority. “This is your reality, Princess. You cannot run from it. The marriage will be consummated. You will need to provide heirs. There is no escaping that.”

Each word she spoke settled into your bones, cold and unyielding. You had spent so much time avoiding this truth, brushing it aside as something distant. But now, with the weight of her gaze and the reality staring back at you from those diagrams, there was no avoiding it.

The laughter that had once bubbled in your throat turned bitter. There was no humor here. No escape.

Your hands clenched in your lap, gripping the fabric of your gown so tightly your knuckles turned white. You wanted to protest, to fight back against this fate being thrust upon you, but the enormity of it left you speechless. For the first time in days, you felt utterly powerless.

The governess, sensing your resignation, continued in her cold, measured tone. “I suggest you take these lessons more seriously from now on, Princess. This is not just about your future. It is about the future of the kingdom.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t. There was nothing left to say.

You nodded, barely, the movement small and mechanical, as though you had been drained of all energy, all fight. Her words had pressed down on you, threatening to snuff out the last bit of spirit you had left.

And the worst part?

She was right.

There was no escaping this.

× × × ×

Lady Romanoff

The sound of clashing steel filled the training yard, the sharp ring of swords slicing through the afternoon air. Lady Natasha moved with deadly precision, her every strike calculated, her every parry effortless. The soldiers she sparred with were drenched in sweat, struggling to keep up with her, but she showed no mercy. Her red hair was tied back, a single loose strand framing her sharp, focused features.

"Lady Natasha!" A voice called out, breaking the rhythm of the duel.

She spun around, lowering her sword as a servant approached, bowing deeply before handing her a letter sealed with the royal crest. Her sharp eyes lingered on the seal for a moment before she waved her sparring partner off, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.

Natasha turned away from the yard, stepping into the shade of the estate’s stone walls as she broke the seal. Her fingers traced over the words, the formal language of the letter at odds with the simple, direct life she preferred.

“To Lady Natasha Romanoff,

By order of His Majesty and the future Queen of Montelune, you are hereby invited to join the Princess Y/N’s court as a trusted advisor and protector…”

Her lips curved into the barest hint of a smile. Protector. She could handle that.

The wind stirred around her as she folded the letter, her eyes flickering toward the horizon where the palace loomed in the distance. She had been summoned. And when the future queen called, Natasha Romanoff never refused.

- - - -

Lady Maximoff

In the quiet of her private study, Lady Wanda Maximoff sat by a large, arched window overlooking the rolling hills that stretched far beyond her family's estate. The air smelled of herbs and candle wax, and the only sound was the faint crackle of the fire behind her. She was deep in thought, her hands idly weaving through the delicate threads of red magic that swirled around her fingertips, when a soft knock broke her focus.

A servant entered, bowing as he held out a letter sealed with the royal crest. Wanda's brows knit together as she dismissed the magic with a flick of her hand, taking the letter and gently breaking the seal.

The letter unfolded in her hands, the parchment crisp and formal, though the weight of its words pressed heavily on her chest.

“To Lady Wanda Maximoff,

By order of His Majesty and the future Queen of Montelune, you are invited to join Princess Y/N’s court, where your wisdom and unique abilities will be invaluable…”

She blinked, her eyes lingering on the phrase unique abilities. They were calling her for more than just her title. A sense of unease stirred in her chest, but also a flicker of something else—purpose.

She closed the letter carefully, her eyes drifting out of the window again. Her future was no longer here in the quiet, secluded halls of her family home. It was with the future queen. It was time to leave the shadows behind.

- - - -

Lady Potts

Lady Virginia Potts stood in the grand parlor of her estate, the late afternoon sun casting golden light over the polished wood floors. Her hands were busy organizing the mountain of correspondence scattered across the table, responding to various requests from lords and ladies who sought her counsel. Her estate was immaculate, a reflection of her meticulous nature.

A servant entered quietly, holding a single letter with a royal seal, far more significant than the others. Pepper paused, her hands stilling as she reached for the letter, curiosity flickering in her eyes.

Breaking the seal, she scanned the words with a practiced eye, though the gravity of the message slowed her reading.

“To Lady Virginia Potts,

By the request of His Majesty and the future Queen of Montelune, you are invited to join Princess Y/N’s court, where your knowledge and expertise in matters of statecraft will be essential…”

Pepper set the letter down, her fingers resting lightly on the parchment. It had been some time since she had involved herself with court politics, preferring the stability of her own estate and businesses. But this... this was a request she could not turn down.

The future queen needed her, and where there was a need for clarity and order, Pepper Potts would always step in.

She smoothed the letter, her lips curving into a soft, knowing smile. The court had no idea what they were in for.

× × × ×

The heavy oak doors creaked open as you were led into the private dining room, the faint rustle of your gown the only sound as the maid quietly withdrew behind you, leaving you in the stillness of the grand chamber. A fire crackled softly in the hearth, casting a golden light over the room, and your eyes fell on him immediately.

King James stood by the large window, one hand resting on the frame, the other gloved hand at his side. He looked out over the sprawling grounds, the fading light of the evening casting a halo of gold through his hair, painting him in a soft, almost ethereal glow. You simply stood there, unable to speak. Unable to move. You hadn't seen him like this before—unburdened by the weight of ceremony or titles—and it stirred something deep within you.

Sensing your presence, he turned slowly, and the moment his eyes met yours, the air shifted. His smile bloomed—soft, adoring, and it lit up the space between you, as though you were the only person in the world.

"Princess," he murmured, his voice warm and intimate, yet restrained. There was a note of something unspoken there, something deeper. The way he looked at you—his blue eyes tracing the delicate lines of your face—made your heart stutter in your chest.

You offered him a small curtsy, your stomach fluttering as you lifted your gaze. “Your Majesty.”

"Please, to you I’m just James." James gestured to the long, elegantly set dining table. “Join me.”

You approached the table with grace, your pulse quickening as you took in the grand spread before you. The chairs were separated by a stretch of three empty seats, and despite the intimate setting, the distance felt like you're oceans apart. You hesitated for a moment but obeyed, sitting across from him at the far end.

He watched you, his smile not faltering, but his eyes grew thoughtful as you settled into your seat. “You look lovely,” he said quietly, his voice rich but gentle.

Your heart gave a little flutter, and despite the formality, you couldn’t help but feel warmth creep up your neck at his words.

“Thank you,” you replied, meeting his gaze with a steadying breath. “You seem… deeply in thought,” you added, noting the subtle tension in his jaw, the way his gloved hand rested stiffly against the table.

He let out a quiet breath, his eyes lingering on yours as though he was trying to gauge your thoughts.

“Perhaps,” he admitted with a small, almost shy smile. “It’s hard not to be when my future is sitting across from me.”

You look down with a smile, a shy reaction. But before you could let them settle too deeply, you cleared your throat, turning the conversation to lighter things. Questions formed quickly in your mind—trivial, unimportant things, but questions that would keep your heart from racing too fast, your thoughts from spiraling.

You gathered your courage, determined to make this dinner less formal and distant. There was so much you didn’t know about hum—about the man you were about to marry. So, before the weight of more serious questions settled over the evening, you decided to ask him about the smaller things. Things that would make him feel more human, less like the elusive king you were supposed to wed.

“Do you have a nickname?” you asked, breaking the silence with a playful tilt to your voice, hoping to ease the tension that had been lingering since the moment you entered the room.

James blinked, surprised by the question, then let out a soft chuckle. “A nickname? I didn’t expect that to be your first question.”

You smiled, “I have to start somewhere, don’t I?”

He grinned, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “Well, my mother used to call me Bucky when I was younger,” he said, his voice softer now. “But that name’s reserved for a select few.”

“Bucky,” you repeated, the name feeling strangely intimate on your lips. “And who are these ‘select few’?”

Bucky’s smile widened, but there was a flicker of something deeper in his gaze. “People I trust. Mostly my closest friends.”

Your curiosity grew, and you seized the opportunity to dig a little deeper. “Speaking of which, who are your best friends? I feel like I should know the people who are important to you.”

“Steve—Captain Rogers, as you might know him. He’s been my best friend since we were boys. There’s also Sam—he’s got a sharp sense of humor and enjoys keeping me humble.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a good group around you.” You couldn’t help but smile at the affection in his tone.

Bucky nodded, his gaze growing warmer as he spoke of his friends. “Yeah, I’m lucky to have them.”

“And your horse? What’s his name?” You shifted in your seat, feeling a bit more comfortable now that the conversation had softened.

“His name’s Alpine.” He glanced at you with a grin, clearly surprised at your curiosity.

“Alpine?” you repeated, arching a brow.

“It suits him,” Bucky said with a shrug, though there was a twinkle of fondness in his eyes. “He’s stubborn, strong-willed… reminds me of someone.”

You laughed softly at that, feeling the weight of the room lift slightly. “I’d like to officially meet him sometime.”

Bucky’s smile lingered. The conversation had been easy, light, but the distance—both physical and emotional—still felt too vast. You wanted to ask more, to dig beneath the surface. But the space between you felt like a barrier, one you suddenly couldn’t bear any longer.

Without overthinking it, you set down your cutlery, stood, and lifted your plate from its place. Bucky’s eyes widened slightly in surprise as you walked around the table and sat beside him, taking the chair at his right.

Bucky watched you, clearly taken aback, but there was no disapproval in his gaze. If anything, he was amazed at how you seem to give no mind with tradition.

Bucky looked up at you, his lips curving into an intrigued smile.

“Sitting across from you felt… wrong,” you admitted softly. “There’s too much distance.”

Bucky’s eyes softened at your words, and though his expression remained composed, the way his body angled toward you—subtly, almost instinctively—revealed more than he probably intended.

You swallowed, heart pounding as you prepared yourself for the question you’d been avoiding all night. “There’s something I need to ask you, Your Majes—”

“James.”

“James. . .” You repeated his name.

Sitting next to him, the air seemed intimate, and the flicker of the candles on the table cast shadows that danced between your gazes. He was watching you—intensely, yet not in a way that was uncomfortable. There was something magnetic about the way he studied you, as if he was trying to figure you out, but not in the calculating manner you’d come to expect from others.

You swallowed, composing yourself. The words slipped from your lips before you had time to second guess them. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you... about Lady Hill.”

Bucky’s expression didn’t falter, but you noticed the slight stiffening of his shoulders, the way his jaw clenched ever so subtly. He turned slightly to look at you, his eyes searching yours.

You hadn’t meant to sound so blunt, but the name had hung between you like a shadow since the ladies made sure the name stuck to you. The jealousy bubbling up inside you—the ache you refused to admit even to yourself—made it impossible to keep the question locked away.

“Lady Hill,” you continued, your voice quieter now, though no less steady. “I’ve heard... stories. About you and her.”

Bucky sighed softly, his eyes drifting momentarily to the flickering flames in the hearth before returning to you. “You’ve heard a lot, I’m sure.”

You pressed your lips together, not trusting yourself to speak. It was foolish, really—this feeling of jealousy. You barely knew him, yet the thought of him being close to someone else, someone before you, unsettled you in ways you couldn’t quite understand. Or, maybe you did, but you didn’t want to admit it.

Bucky turned his full attention to you now, his eyes softening, though his gaze held something more serious, something weighted with regret. “There was a time when Lady Hill and I were... close. But that time has long since passed.”

You exhaled softly, though the knot in your chest didn’t fully loosen. “And now?”

His gaze softened even further, as if he could see straight through your carefully composed exterior. “Now?” he echoed, his voice quieter, more intimate. “Now, I’m here with you, not her. And that should tell you everything.”

The words sent a flutter through your chest, though you tried to ignore it. There was something undeniable between you—a pull, a connection that went beyond formalities. Yet, you couldn’t let yourself get lost in it. Not yet.

“Yes, yes it does.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed as he studied your expression, taking in the slight tremble in your voice and the way you seemed to press your lips together, fighting to keep your emotions in check. He didn’t need you to say anything more to know what was going on in your head. He could see it, the doubt creeping into your mind.

He sighed softly, setting down his glass, the clink against the table louder than the quiet room. His gaze never left yours, though.

“Something’s wrong,” he said quietly, his voice laced with a gentleness you hadn’t expected. “You’re not just asking about Lady Hill. There’s something else. What is it?”

You blinked, taken aback by how perceptive he was. You hadn’t meant for him to see through the carefully built walls you had erected. But there he was, watching you with concern, as though he could sense something brewing inside you. Your pulse quickened as you struggled to keep your composure, to bury the jealousy that had crept up, uninvited, after hearing all those stories.

You looked away for a moment, trying to find the right words, to shake off the feeling that you weren’t enough—that maybe you never would be for a man like him. But Bucky wasn’t the type to let something like that slide.

“Y/N,” he said softly, leaning in just a little, as though closing the gap between you might help ease the distance in your heart. “Talk to me. Whatever you’ve heard... Whatever they’ve said, you can ask me. I’ll tell you the truth.”

Your breath hitched, his words wrapping around you like a lifeline you hadn’t realized you needed. Slowly, you turned back to face him.

“They...” You hesitated, biting your lip as you struggled to say it. “They said, you always sneak out late at night to see her.” The admission came out more quietly than you intended.

“Do you believe that?”

You swallowed hard, looking down at your hands as your fingers twisted the fabric of your gown.

“I don’t want to believe it,” you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. “But... they’re so convincing. And I—” Your breath hitched as the words caught in your throat, and you couldn’t bring yourself to finish the sentence.

“Who is ‘they,’ Y/N?”

“People in court. They... they—”

“Be specific,” Bucky interrupted, his voice low, a command wrapped in concern. His blue eyes darkened with a mixture of frustration and protectiveness. He wasn’t angry—no, this was something else. He needed to know who had put these thoughts in your head, who had made you doubt him.

Your mouth hung open, caught off guard by the force of his words. He wasn’t going to let this go. He wouldn’t just sit there and let these rumors fester. And now, you couldn’t stop wondering—what would he do if you said their names? What would happen if you told him it was Sharon and Leah who had whispered those poisonous words into your ears?

For a brief moment, the idea of saying their names lingered on your lips. But you hesitated. Would telling him only make things worse? Would it lead to a confrontation you weren’t ready for? What if he confronted them, and everything in court shifted?

His gaze remained locked on yours, unwavering, waiting.

“Y/N,” he said again, his voice softer now, “Tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter who said it,” you murmured finally, shaking your head before looking back at him.

He blinked, surprised by your words, by the mercy you had just shown—choosing not to name those who had tried to plant doubt between the two of you. Most people in the court would have been eager to point fingers, to seek revenge or justice. But not you.

It doesn’t matter who said it. Your words echoed in his mind, and he realized just how different you were from the others. You weren’t driven by spite or the need for retribution. And that stunned him, amazed him in a way he hadn’t expected.

A slow breath escaped him as he continued to watch you, the vulnerability in your eyes clear, yet there was a strength there, too. A strength in choosing to let go of the pettiness of court gossip, in refusing to let others’ words dictate your path.

God, you're unlike anyone I've ever known.

But even as that admiration filled him, Bucky knew one thing for certain: he would find out who had whispered those lies to you. He wouldn’t let this slide. Not for the sake of revenge, but because those people—whoever they were—had tried to tarnish what was growing between you and him. And that was something he couldn’t forgive so easily.

Still, he wouldn’t push you now. He wouldn’t force you to tell him. You had shown mercy, and he respected that. But he would find out in another way. Quietly. Without involving you any further.

“You’re right,” he said softly, his voice a low rumble that sent a shiver down your spine. “They don’t matter.”

You nodded with a fleeting faint smile. Your eyes flicked to his gloved hand, the leather dark and smooth, always present, never explained.

“The glove. . .” you trailed off hesitantly, “Why do you always wear it?”

Bucky’s gaze followed yours, landing on the glove that covered his left hand. His face shifted, the softness hardening into what seemed like pain, and you thought he might not answer.

He flexed his fingers beneath the glove, his jaw tightening. “It’s... not something I speak about often,” he admitted quietly, his voice rougher now. “But since you’ve asked, and since we’re to be... married, I’ll tell you.”

You held your breath, your heart pounding as you waited for him to continue.

Bucky turned his head slightly, the tension in his posture growing. “I was injured. A long time ago,” He paused, his eyes flicking to you, gauging your reaction. “The glove hides the... reminder.”

He was holding back, guarding himself. You could feel it, sense it in every strained breath he took. Whatever lay beneath that glove—whatever part of him he hadn’t revealed—it was something that still haunted him, something he wasn’t ready to share to its full extent.

“I’m... sorry,” you said quietly, the words feeling inadequate. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Bucky offered a small, strained smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “There’s no need to apologize. It’s just a part of who I am now.”

“I see. You are very brave.”

His fingers twitched, aching to close the small space between you. But instead of reaching out, he curled them into his lap, trying to keep control. Because if he touched you now—if he let himself give in even for a second—he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

But the fear... the fear that you wouldn’t want this—wouldn’t want him—kept him silent. For now.

“You surprise me, you know,” he murmured, his voice low, intimate.

You blinked, “I do?”

He nodded, his lips curving into a small, almost tender smile. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met. You ask questions no one else dares to ask.”

“I want to get to know you. .” You said without missing a beat, “You gave me a choice at the garden—whether to run or stay while knowing who I was—I chose to stay.”

The warmth in Bucky's gaze sent a flutter through your chest, making it hard to think clearly. You could feel the weight of his stare on you, the way his eyes traced every curve of your face, every movement you made.

"I feel the same way," Bucky said, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the space between you. His eyes lingering on your lips before slowly moving to look into your eyes.

You felt a pull, an unspoken invitation hanging in the air. You smiled and straightened yourself, “Good, I’m glad we both ag—”

Before you could finish, his hand cupped the side of your face and captured you into a kiss. His touch electrifies every fiber of you, and you froze, your heart hammering in your chest.

It wasn't a tentative kiss, nor was it hesitant. His hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you closer as his lips moved against yours, gently nibbling on your bottom lip. He kissed you like he'd been dying to do it, like he'd been holding back for far too long, and now he couldn't help himself.

Your breath hitched, your mind going blank as you melted into him, your hand instinctively gripping the sleeve of his coat. The taste of him, the feel of his body so close to yours, was intoxicating.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours. His eyes searched yours, filled with an adoration you had never seen before, and it took everything in you to catch your breath.

“I've wanted to kiss you since that day but I had to let you go," Bucky whispered, his voice rough with need.

His gaze was heavy, half-lidded with desire, and just as he was about to lean in to taste you again, a knock at the door cut through the moment, shattering the fragile bubble of intimacy.

You jolted away from him, creating a hasty distance between you, while Bucky remained unusually calm, though his eyes still burned with the heat of the moment.

“Enter,” Bucky called out, his voice steady despite the tension lingering in the room.

The door creaked open, and Steve entered, his gaze flickering between you and Bucky before settling on his friend.

“Your Majesty, Are you ready to leave?” Steve asked, his tone casual, though you didn’t miss the brief glance he gave you.

“Oh,” Bucky muttered, his posture relaxing as he slid his hands into his coat pockets. “Is it that time already?”

You busied yourself, trying to smooth down your gown and regulate your breathing as you stood up, your heart hadn’t quite slowed.

Bucky stood slowly, his eyes never leaving yours as he straightened his coat, a small, teasing smile curling at the corners of his lips. He took a step toward you, the warmth of his gaze made your heart flutter all over again.

He reached for your hand, taking it gently on his own, and brought it to his lips, his touch soft and reverent. The kiss he pressed to the back of your hand was tender, but the heat of his breath sent a shiver racing up your spine. When he pulled away, his fingers lingered, tracing the delicate skin of your knuckles.

“I enjoyed my time with you tonight,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate. His thumb brushed lightly over your skin, and you could feel the sincerity in his words. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

He leaned in ever so slightly, his voice dropping even lower, the teasing glint returning to his eyes. “And Princess, don’t think about climbing any more walls,” His lips tugged into a smirk, “I won’t help you, if I find you.”

A soft laugh escaped you despite the warmth in your cheeks, and before you could respond, he stepped back, releasing your hand with a lingering touch.

Turning toward Steve, Bucky’s expression shifted back to his usual composed self. “Steve, walk her to her chambers, I’ll meet you outside.”

Steve nodded, stepping forward as Bucky offered you one last look, his gaze softening again. “Rest well, Y/N. For tomorrow I shall be yours, and you mine.”

And with that, he left the room, his presence like a shadow lingering even after the door closed behind him. You stood there, still reeling from the touch of his lips on your hand, from the quiet promise in his words, as Steve approached, clearing his throat gently to pull you from your thoughts.

“Shall we?” Steve asked, his voice calm as always, though there was a knowing edge to his expression, as if he had sensed more than he let on.

You nodded, your heart still racing, but you couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at your lips as Steve offered you his arm. As you walked together toward your chambers, you couldn’t shake the feeling that tonight had changed everything. And no matter how much you tried to calm your racing heart, the warmth of Bucky’s kiss stayed with you, long after you had bid him goodnight.

× × × ×

The heavy velvet drapes lining the walls absorbed much of the noise, leaving the soft echo of your footsteps the only sound that filled the space.

He glanced at you from the corner of his eye, “You’re quiet,” he said, his voice gentle, as though he didn’t want to intrude on whatever was lingering in your mind.

You gave a soft, tight-lipped smile, your heart still not quite calmed down after what had transpired with Bucky.

“I find myself with much to contemplate,” you murmured, your voice carrying the weight of the evening. You stole a glance at Steve, who seemed to nod, understanding more than you expected him to.

“Bucky often has that effect upon people,” he said, a small smile tugging at his lips, though his gaze remained forward.

The comment caught you off guard, and despite yourself, a soft laugh escaped. “Does he?” you asked, your tone teasing, but there was something in Steve’s smile that hinted he knew exactly what had happened between you and Bucky.

Steve chuckled, his voice a low rumble. “You’ve noticed by now, haven’t you?” He gave you a sidelong glance. “He is not an easy man to understand, I grant you that. But when he chooses to care for someone…” Steve’s voice faltered slightly, as though choosing his words with care, “…he does not do so in half measures.”

Your heart skipped a beat at the implication, but you didn’t respond. Instead, you kept walking, the candle lit hallway stretching out ahead of you, each flickering light casting long shadows on the stone floor.

Steve’s words hung in the air, and as you walked in silence for a moment, you couldn’t help but replay Bucky’s kiss in your mind—the way his lips had lingered on yours, the way his eyes had softened when he looked at you, the teasing warmth of his final words.

“Bucky’s lucky to have someone like you,” Steve said after a while, breaking the silence again. His tone was sincere, almost protective, and when you looked at him, you could see the loyalty in his eyes—not just to his friend, but to you as well.

The comment took you by surprise, and you blinked, unsure of what to say. “I’m lucky to have met him,” you replied softly, your voice carrying more weight than you had expected. It wasn’t just a formal response; it was the truth. In the short time you’d known Bucky, he had drawn something out of you—something deeper than you were prepared to admit.

Steve’s gaze softened, and his lips curved into a small, approving smile. “I’m glad you think so.”

As the walk continued, the palace walls seemed to narrow slightly, the corridor leading toward your chambers now dimly lit by only a few flickering torches. You could feel the end of the evening approaching, and with it, a certain reluctance to leave the comfortable quiet that had settled between you and Steve.

“Tell me, Captain,” you began hesitantly, “do you believe that His Majesty ever... doubts himself? Given the weight of the responsibilities he bears?”

Steve’s expression grew thoughtful, his brow furrowing ever so slightly. “He bears more than most could comprehend,” he said slowly. “But one thing I know with certainty—once his mind is set, whether it be upon a matter or a person,” his gaze flickered toward you meaningfully, “he does not question his resolve.”

As you approached the door to your chambers, Steve slowed, and you could feel the shift in the air, the end of the conversation nearing. He let go of your arm and turned to face you fully, his expression serious but kind.

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” he said simply, as if promising something far greater than just his presence. “If you need anything.”

“Thank you,” you replied, meaning it more than you could express.

He gave you a small nod, stepping back slightly as you reached for the door handle. “Goodnight, Princess.”

You paused, the door half-open, and gave him a warm smile before slipping inside. “Goodnight, Captain.”

As the door closed behind you and you backed against the door, your heart still racing, you realized that tomorrow your life will be changed drastically.

× × × ×

Captain Rogers descended the grand staircase, he adjusted the hilt of his sword, his gaze scanning the courtyard for Bucky.

The king was waiting by the fountain, leaning against his white stallion, Alpine, his silhouette almost ethereal under the silvery moonlight.

“Ready to head out?” Bucky asked, his voice low and casual, as if they were merely discussing a routine ride instead of what lay ahead.

Steve mounted his own horse, the leather creaking softly beneath him as he settled into the saddle. He glanced at Bucky, then asked, “You kissed her, didn’t you?”

A smirk tugged at Bucky’s lips, but he didn’t turn to face Steve. “Wouldn’t you?” he replied smoothly.

Steve let out a sigh, shaking his head slightly. “I’m not going to answer that.”

A soft laugh escaped Bucky, the sound surprisingly light given the tension that clung to the night. They nudged their horses forward, the steady clop of hooves the only sound as they made their way along the moonlit path.

“You know,” Steve began, his gaze drifting to the silhouette of the palace behind them, “I have to wonder… Why do you want to be in Annecy tonight? Your wedding is tomorrow, Buck.”

Bucky’s shoulders tensed slightly, and he let out a low, rueful chuckle. He flexed his left hand, the movement barely perceptible but unmistakable to Steve’s watchful eyes.

“You know why,” he said softly.

Steve nodded, understanding flashing across his features. He knew Bucky’s struggle—the ghosts that haunted him, the weight he carried that went far beyond a king’s responsibilities. There was always a part of Bucky that seemed to be at war with himself, the part that made even the simplest things—like sharing the same roof with his own future wife—feel like an insurmountable task.

They rode in silence for a few more minutes, the steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves lulling them into a semblance of calm. But then, Bucky shifted in his saddle, his gaze flickering to Steve.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Bucky said suddenly, his voice quiet but firm. “I need you to show a little interest in the princess.”

Steve’s head snapped around, his eyes widening. “What?” He blinked, incredulous. “Have you gone mad? Are you trying to get my head chopped off by the Queen Dowager?”

Bucky’s lips twitched into a smile, but his eyes were serious. “It’s important, Steve.”

“No,” Steve said flatly, shaking his head. “I’m not doing that. It’ll cause a scandal. It’ll make you look like a fool and make me look even worse.”

“Oh, come on,” Bucky urged, his tone almost playful.

“No,” Steve repeated firmly, his jaw set. “Why? Why would I do that?”

“Because I need some gossip,” Bucky said with a grin, though his eyes held a hint of something deeper. “Just enough to keep people talking.”

Steve let out a begrudging laugh, shaking his head again. “That’s worse, Bucky. Do you know how bad that would look? I’ll look like I’m trying to swoop in and steal the queen. The court would eat us alive. And besides—” he narrowed his eyes at Bucky, his expression hardening, “you really want to make me look like that?”

“Just trust me on this,” Bucky insisted, his voice dropping to a more serious tone. “I’ll have your back, like I always do. You know that.”

Steve held his gaze for a long moment, suspicion mingling with concern. Bucky had that look in his eyes—the one that said he was up to something, something he wasn’t sharing.

“What are you really up to, Bucky?” Steve asked quietly, his brow furrowing. “What’s this really about?”

Bucky hesitated, the playful glint in his eyes dimming. He looked away, his gaze turning distant. “I need to find out who’s making up stories about me.”

“So, you want to use me to flush out whoever it is?”

Bucky’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. “Something like that.”

“Bucky…” Steve’s voice held a warning edge. “You’re risking a lot by playing these games.”

“It’s not a game,” Bucky shot back quietly, his voice tight. “They’re trying to undermine her, and I can’t stand by and watch.”

Steve stared at him, a mix of disbelief and reluctant understanding on his face. “And you think feigning interest in the princess will make them reveal themselves?”

Bucky shrugged, his smile strained. “Jealousy’s a powerful thing. If I act indifferent, it might embolden them. If I get you to show some interest in her, they might think they have more of an opportunity to turn her against me. The more they reveal, the more I can do.”

Steve let out a frustrated breath, running a hand through his hair. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

Bucky’s expression softened, the steel in his eyes giving way to a gentler determination. “I know. But I can’t let them manipulate her. I can sense that Y/N is strong, but she’s alone here. She needs to see I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep her safe—even if she doesn’t understand it yet.”

Steve was quiet for a long moment, his gaze searching Bucky’s face. “And what if it backfires? What if she thinks you’re encouraging me because you don’t care?”

“Then I’ll have to fix it.” Bucky’s voice was resolute, his gaze unwavering. “I’ll make her see. But first, I need to know who’s been feeding her lies.”

Steve’s shoulders slumped, a sigh escaping him. “You’re asking me to throw myself into the lion’s den.”

“Just for a little while,” Bucky said softly, his voice almost pleading. “Just until I get to the bottom of this.”

Steve shook his head, but a small, resigned smile tugged at his lips. “You owe me a lot for this, you know that?”

Bucky let out a quiet laugh, the tension in his posture easing slightly. “I know. I always do.”

They continued riding in silence, the moon casting long shadows along the path. Steve’s mind raced, weighing the risks and consequences, but beneath it all was a steady resolve.

“Fine,” he murmured after a long pause. “But don’t blame me if this blows up in your face.”

“I won’t. Thank you, Steve.” Bucky smiled, his expression grateful and laced with relief.

Steve nodded once, the resolve in his eyes mirroring Bucky’s. “Let’s hope this works. For her sake.”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispered, his gaze turning distant as his thoughts drifted back to you. “For her sake.”

× × × ×

The morning of your wedding dawned with a soft golden light filtering through the tall windows of your chamber, bathing the room in its warmth. You sat in front of the grand vanity, your reflection staring back at you, almost unrecognizable in its regal splendor. The maids had been working tirelessly to prepare you, their hands deftly weaving your hair into an intricate style, fastening the delicate tiara onto your head—a symbol of the new life you were about to enter.

Your gown, a masterpiece of lace and silk, shimmered in the soft light, its heavy skirts spreading around you like a cascade of moonlight. The bodice fits you like a second skin, the embroidery of gold thread intertwining with pearls, adding to the weight you already felt in your chest. You could hear the faint noises of activity from the palace below, the preparations for the ceremony well underway.

A knock at the door pulled you from your thoughts. Lady Rambeau entered, her usual composed expression softening slightly as her gaze settled on you.

“Princess,” she said, bowing her head, “the carriage is being prepared. It will be time soon.”

You nodded, your hands clenching and unclenching in your lap. Your heart was a storm, the events of the past days swirling together with the impending reality of the ceremony. This is it, you thought. There was no more time for questions, no more time for doubts.

Lady Rambeau approached, sensing the nervousness in you. “You look every bit the queen,” she said quietly, offering a rare, almost motherly smile. “His Majesty will be pleased.”

You swallowed, your heart stuttering at the mention of Bucky. Bucky. How strange it felt to think of him as both the man you had kissed, the man whose touch had ignited something deep within you, and the king you were about to marry. The man who was still so much of a mystery to you, though the connection you felt with him was undeniable.

“Thank you,” you whispered, your voice soft, your mind too tangled with emotion to say more.

The doors of your chamber opened again, and in walked Captain Rogers, looking as composed and stoic as always, but when his gaze landed on you, he froze, his eyes widening with something akin to awe.

For a moment, he seemed at a loss for words, and then his expression softened, his voice coming out quieter than usual. “Princess…” He cleared his throat, his gaze sweeping over you once more. “You look... radiant.”

His compliment caught you off guard, and you felt a faint blush creep up your cheeks. “Thank you, Captain,” you murmured, unable to suppress a small smile. There was something endearing about seeing the usually composed Captain Rogers momentarily taken aback.

He gave you a small, respectful nod before regaining his usual composure. “It is time,” he said, though his voice was still tinged with admiration.

Lady Rambeau stepped back, allowing you space, and Captain Rogers extended his arm toward you. “Shall I escort you?”

You hesitated only a moment before placing your hand in his. His arm was strong and steady, a rock amidst the storm that churned within you.

Captain Rogers led you down the grand staircase and out to the courtyard where the carriage awaited. Its intricate design was fit for a royal wedding, adorned with fresh flowers and draped in soft velvet. The horses were restless, sensing the energy of the day, and the servants moved with ease, making final adjustments.

As you reached the bottom step, Captain Rogers assisted you into the carriage, his hand still steady as he helped you settle into the seat. Lady Rambeau followed behind, ensuring everything was in place before stepping aside.

Captain Rogers gave you one final look before closing the door. “You will be magnificent, Princess,” he said, his tone filled with quiet confidence. “And His Majesty will be waiting.”

You smiled softly, trying to calm the flurry of nerves that danced in your chest. “Thank you, Captain.”

With a nod, he stepped back, and the driver clicked his reins, the carriage lurching forward toward the abbey where your future awaited.

The ride was quiet, the only sounds were the clatter of hooves against the cobblestone streets and the soft rustling of your gown as you shifted. Through the windows, you caught glimpses of the city—banners flying high, people lining the streets to catch a glimpse of the royal procession. Their cheers and waves were a blur, but their excitement was palpable, filling the air with a sense of anticipation.

As the carriage approached the abbey, your heart began to race. The towering spires of the grand stone building loomed ahead, casting long shadows across the cobbled courtyard. The doors of the abbey were open, revealing the grand aisle that stretched toward the altar where Bucky would be waiting.

The carriage came to a slow halt, and you took a deep breath, steadying yourself as the door opened. Captain Rogers appeared once again, offering his hand to help you down.

“Are you ready, Princess?” he asked, his tone as steady as his hand.

You nodded, though your heart felt as if it were about to burst from your chest. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Captain Rogers smiled softly, and as you stepped out of the carriage, he guided you toward the abbey’s entrance. The distance between you and the altar felt both infinite and fleeting. The weight of your gown, the gaze of the crowd—it was all overwhelming, yet the thought of Bucky waiting for you at the end of the aisle gave you strength.

The inner doors of the abbey slowly creaked open, revealing the breathtaking sight before you. The soft sound of music swelled through the vast stone hall, a hauntingly beautiful melody echoing off the towering pillars. As you took your first step inside, delicate flower petals, pale pinks and whites, drifted down from the ceiling, falling like a gentle rain around you, each petal kissing the floor at your feet.

The entire kingdom seemed to be watching, every gaze fixed on you as you stood framed by the grand doorway. Your heart raced, each beat thundering in your chest as you took in the magnitude of the moment. The aisle stretched out long before you, lined with noblemen and women from across the kingdom, their eyes wide with anticipation. But none of them mattered.

Because at the end of the aisle, waiting by the altar, stood James.

His regal form was clad in the finest ceremonial attire, gold embroidery gleaming against the dark velvet of his tunic. He looked every bit the king he was, tall and powerful, but his gaze—his gaze was solely on you. As the flower petals fluttered down, his expression softened, his lips curving into the smallest, most tender smile. His blue eyes, usually so guarded, were filled with warmth, a quiet awe that sent a rush of emotion surging through you.

You inhaled deeply, gathering your strength. You were walking alone, without an arm to hold, without anyone to guide you. This moment was yours to face. And with each step you took, you felt the weight of the gown, the tiara on your head, the delicate lace of your veil—all of it settling over you like a mantle of responsibility and power.

The crowd whispered in reverent awe, but their voices seemed like distant echoes as you walked forward, the petals beneath your feet crinkling softly with every step. The aisle felt both endless and too short, time stretching and compressing. But you kept your head high, your gaze locked on James, the silent thread between you pulling you closer with every heartbeat.

As you drew nearer, you could see the way his eyes shimmered, as if he, too, felt the enormity of the moment. His posture was regal, composed, but there was something in his expression—something that told you he was as affected by this as you were.

With each step, the world around you faded. The grandeur of the abbey, the watching crowd, the petals—they all became background to the electric pull between you and James.

Finally, you reached the end of the aisle. Your breath hitched, heart pounding, as you came to stand before him. For a moment, everything else fell away. It was just you and him.

James’s hand extended toward you, his touch warm, his smile soft and full of something deeper than words. “Y/N,” he whispered, his voice low, meant only for you. “You’re captivating.”

A flush crept up your neck, you were about to become his queen. You were about to take your place at his side—not just as a bride, but as his equal, his partner.

You gazed deeply into the most bewitching blue eyes, in the way his hand held yours so carefully, you knew that whatever doubts you had carried—about the kingdom, about him—they had no place here. Today, there was only you and Bucky, standing together at the threshold of something far greater than either of you could have imagined.

Bucky’s eyes never left yours, as if he were searching for something—reassurance, perhaps, or some unspoken promise. His fingers, warm and steady, curled gently around yours, grounding you in the midst of your racing thoughts.

The officiant’s voice cut through the air, ceremonious and strong, pulling you back to the present, though Bucky’s gaze still tethered you in place.

“Today, we bear witness to the union of our King, James Buchanan Barnes the third and his chosen bride, Princess Y/N of Zienna, a bond that not only joins two hearts but solidifies the foundation upon which this kingdom shall flourish.”

The words washed over you, powerful yet distant, as if they belonged to someone else’s story. And as you stood there, facing Bucky, you realized that while this was the culmination of the court’s expectations and the kingdom’s future, it was also more than that.

It was about him.

And you.

Bucky’s thumb brushed lightly against the back of your hand, a small, intimate gesture that sent warmth flooding through you. You met his gaze, and in that moment, something shifted. The doubt, the fear that had haunted you for weeks, seemed to dissolve under the intensity of his silent promise.

“Princess Y/N,” the officiant’s voice drew you back, “do you take King James as your husband, to honor and stand by him for the good of this kingdom and for all the days of your life?”

Your heart stilled for a fraction of a second, and then, with a steady breath, you nodded.

“I do,” you said softly. It wasn’t just a vow to the kingdom or its expectations; it was a vow to Bucky, the man beneath the crown, the man you were beginning to see more clearly with every passing moment.

The officiant turned to Bucky. “And do you, Your Majesty, take Princess Y/N as your wife, to cherish, protect, and honor her, for the good of this kingdom and for all the days of your life?”

Bucky’s gaze never wavered. His voice, low and steady, seemed to echo through the hall, even though he spoke just for you. “I do.”

As the officiant began the final blessings, you barely heard the words. All that mattered was Bucky’s hand in yours, the gentle press of his thumb against your skin, the warmth of his presence. And in his eyes, you saw it clearly—this was not just duty for him either. There was something deeper, something neither of you had fully acknowledged yet, but it was there, undeniable and magnetic.

“By the power vested in me,” the officiant declared, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

The abbey seemed to hold its breath. The world, once again, shrank to just the two of you.

Bucky took a slow step closer, his hand still entwined with yours. His gaze dropped briefly to your lips before meeting your eyes again, something flickering in his expression—anticipation. He leaned down, his movements careful, as though savoring the moment, and pressed a kiss to your lips.

It wasn’t a ceremonial kiss. It wasn’t for show.

It was the kiss of a man who had been waiting, yearning for this moment. His lips were warm, his touch tender yet filled with a quiet passion that left your heart racing all over again. The crowd faded away once more, the applause distant and faint, as you melted into him, your hand tightening around his.

When Bucky pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours, his breath warm against your skin. “You’re mine now,” he whispered softly, just for you. There was no arrogance in his voice, only a raw honesty that sent shivers down your spine.

“I am,” you whispered back, your voice barely audible, but the words hung between you, carrying a promise that went far beyond this day.

Bucky’s lips quirked into a small smile, his eyes alight with something warm, something real. And as you both turned to face the crowd, ready to walk back down the aisle as husband and wife, you knew—whatever challenges lay ahead, whatever doubts or fears still lingered, you would face them together.

× × × ×

The grand hall was alive with music and laughter, the sounds of celebration echoing off the high ceilings. Glittering chandeliers cast a warm, golden glow across the room, illuminating the hundreds of guests who had gathered to celebrate the royal union. The air was filled with the scent of fresh flowers and fine wine, mingling with the soft murmur of conversation and the occasional burst of laughter.

You stood at the edge of the dance floor, a glass of champagne in hand, watching as couples twirled in elegant dances, their gowns and suits a blur of color and movement. The weight of the tiara on your head reminded you of your new role, but it felt strangely lighter now, after the vows had been spoken, after the kiss that still lingered on your lips.

Across the room, Bucky stood among a group of nobles, listening to their conversation with polite attentiveness. But his gaze kept drifting back to you, his watchful eyes never leaving your figure for too long. There was a tension in the way he stood, a quiet possessiveness in the way he observed you, as if even from this distance, he wanted to be sure you were safe, that you were comfortable.

You could feel his gaze burning on you, and it sent a flutter through your chest. He hadn’t been far from your side all night, his presence a constant reassurance, a steady anchor amidst the whirlwind of festivities. And though you hadn’t had much time to speak since the ceremony, every glance, every brief touch of his hand against yours, felt like a promise that this night was only the beginning.

A soft voice at your side drew your attention back to the present. “Your Majesty.”

Lady Rambeau appeared at your elbow, her expression as composed as ever, through her eyes held a hint of warmth. “There are a few ladies I’d like you to meet,” she said, her tone formal but respectful.

You nodded, grateful for the distraction. “Of course.”

She gestured toward a small group of women approaching from the other side of the room. As they drew nearer, you recognized them from their noble houses, each of them a prominent figure in the kingdom. But there was something more about them—an air of confidence, of grace and power—that set them apart from the other courtiers.

“These are some of the finest ladies in court,” Lady Rambeau continued, her voice lowering slightly as they approached. “They will be valuable allies to you, my Queen.”

The first woman stepped forward, her striking red hair catching the light as she offered you a small, respectful curtsy. “Lady Natasha Romanoff, Your Majesty,” she introduced herself, her voice smooth and controlled, though her sharp eyes seemed to take in everything at once. “It is an honor to serve the queen.”

You smiled, feeling the weight of her words and the strength behind them. “The honor is mine, Lady Natasha. I look forward to getting to know you better.”

Next, a woman with dark, piercing eyes and an aura of quiet intensity stepped forward, offering a graceful curtsy. “Lady Wanda Maximoff,” she said, her voice soft but filled with a certain gravity. “If ever you have the need for my skills, my Queen, they are at your disposal.”

You nodded, sensing something deeper in her words, though you couldn’t quite place it. “Thank you, Lady Wanda. I appreciate your support.”

Finally, a woman with an air of calm authority and intelligence stepped forward, her blonde hair elegantly styled. She smiled warmly at you, her eyes twinkling with a quiet humor. “Lady Virginia Potts, Your Majesty. I oversee many of the palace affairs, so if you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

You returned her smile, feeling instantly at ease with her. “I will certainly keep that in mind, Lady Virginia. Thank you.”

Lady Rambeau stepped back slightly, allowing you to take in the moment, surrounded by these powerful women who had now become your allies. There was a sense of reassurance in their presence, a reminder that while this role may be daunting, you were not alone.

As you exchanged a few more pleasantries, you felt Bucky’s gaze on you once again, a protective and possessive energy that seemed to radiate from him even across the crowded hall. You glanced over your shoulder, catching his eyes from across the room.

He gave you a small, knowing smile, his eyes flicking toward Lady Natasha, Wanda, and Pepper as if to acknowledge their presence before returning to you. There was a promise in his gaze—a promise that he would always be watching over you, no matter where you were or who you were with.

You turned toward Natasha, who was observing the room with sharp, calculating eyes. "It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?" you asked, your voice soft but holding a hint of amusement. The grandeur of the evening, the weight of the crown on your head, the people all watching—it was overwhelming, and yet, there was a certain thrill in it.

Natasha’s lips tugged into a small smile, her gaze flicking back to you. “It is. But I imagine you’re used to holding your own.”

“I’m learning quickly, I suppose.” You smiled back, appreciating the compliment.

“I don’t doubt it,” Natasha replied smoothly. “You’ll find the court can be... an interesting place. But if you play your cards right, you’ll have allies in all the right places.” There was a sharpness to her words, a subtle warning about the political nature of the people around you. But beneath it, you could sense her offering her support—her expertise.

Pepper leaned in slightly, her tone warm and filled with humor. “What Natasha means is that while the court can be a bit of a battlefield, there’s no need to navigate it alone. The three of us, well,” she gave a small shrug, “we’ve had our fair share of skirmishes.”

Wanda nodded, her dark eyes studying you with quiet intensity. “The court is full of whispers and schemes. People will say anything to sway your favor.” Her voice was soft, but there was a firm resolve behind it. “But when you surround yourself with people who have your back, the noise becomes just that—noise.”

You took a sip of your champagne, letting their words sink in. It was comforting, in a way, to know that these women had been through the same games you were just beginning to experience. You had already seen the sharp edges of the court with Sharon and Leah—how they used rumors and backhanded comments to try to shake you.

Pepper glanced at you, her eyes twinkling with understanding. “I’m sure you’ve already had a taste of how competitive some of the women can be.” She raised an eyebrow knowingly. “Sharon and Leah, I imagine?”

A soft laugh escaped you before you could stop it, and you nodded. “You could say that. They’ve been… welcoming in their own way.”

“Welcoming. . .That’s one way to put it.” Wanda exchanged a glance with Natasha, a faint smirk tugging at her lips.

“Don’t worry about them. They’re just... testing the waters. Seeing if you’re as strong as you look.” She paused, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “I have a feeling they’ll be disappointed.”

“I certainly hope so.” You couldn’t help but grin at Natasha’s confidence in you.

Pepper leaned in a little closer, her voice dropping slightly, though there was still a playful edge to it. “If you ever need a little extra... assistance in handling those types, just let us know. We’ve got plenty of experience dealing with difficult people.”

Wanda’s gaze softened, sensing your internal struggle. “Don’t let them intimidate you. You are the queen now, and that holds power. But more importantly, you have us.” She gestured to the women around you. “We’ve all been through our own trials. We know what it’s like to navigate these treacherous waters.”

Natasha nodded in agreement, her voice quieter now, more sincere. “And we’ve made it through to the other side. You will too.”

You felt a warmth spread through your chest at their words. It wasn’t just the alliance they were offering—it was genuine friendship, the kind of support that went beyond titles and formalities.

“Thank you,” you said softly, your voice laced with gratitude. “I didn’t expect to find this kind of... connection here.”

Pepper placed a gentle hand on your arm, her expression kind. “We look out for each other. That’s how we survive.”

They exchanged glances, their shared smiles filled with a mixture of amusement and affection, and you felt a deep sense of belonging in their presence. It wasn’t just about surviving court anymore—it was about thriving.

Pepper gave a mock sigh, shaking her head with a smile. “Honestly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been any drama tonight. Though, with Sharon and Leah, it’s only a matter of time.”

Wanda chuckled softly. “Perhaps they’re waiting for the right moment. You know they love an audience.”

Just as the laughter between you and the ladies began to fade, a warm presence approached from behind, sending a shiver of awareness down your spine. You didn’t need to turn to know who it was. The subtle shift in the air, the quiet command of the space—Bucky.

You glanced over your shoulder, your heart giving an unbidden flutter as his deep blue eyes met yours. He wore that easy smile, the one that made it seem like he was perfectly comfortable with the world, though you knew there was more to it than that.

"Ladies," Bucky greeted smoothly, giving a small but respectful nod to Natasha, Wanda, and Pepper. "I hope I’m not interrupting anything too important." His gaze lingered on you, a playful glint in his eyes.

Natasha raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Nothing you couldn’t improve upon, Your Majesty.”

Bucky chuckled, his eyes flicking to each of them before settling back on you. “In that case, I wonder if I might steal my wife away for a dance?”

You could feel the amusement radiating from the women beside you, but it was Pepper who spoke first, her tone light and teasing. “By all means, Your Majesty. Just don’t keep her too long. We were just getting to the fun part.”

Wanda smirked, adding, “We wouldn’t want her to forget where her real loyalties lie.”

“I’ll do my best to have her back before you can miss her.” Bucky chuckled again, his hand extended toward you, palm up, his gaze softening as it locked onto yours.

You couldn’t help the smile that tugged at your lips, warmth spreading through you as you placed your hand in his. His fingers curled around yours, firm yet gentle, and the simple touch sent a wave of anticipation through you.

“I’ll be back soon,” you promised the ladies, though your attention was already fully on Bucky.

Bucky gently led you away from the group, to the dance floor, you felt the world begin to fade away, leaving only the two of you.

The music swelled around you, the soft notes of the waltz filling the air like a gentle breeze, but it was Bucky’s presence that consumed you. His hand was warm and sure at your waist, the other cradling your hand as he guided you effortlessly across the floor. His touch, the closeness, made your heart race with an unfamiliar but welcomed thrill.

You looked up at him, meeting his gaze, and the corners of his mouth lifted into that boyish smile that always made your pulse quicken.

“You seem deep in thought, Y/N,” he teased lightly, his voice a soft rumble, the glint in his eyes mischievous.

“I was thinking,” you replied, feigning seriousness, “how lucky I am that you haven’t stepped on my gown yet.”

Bucky chuckled, the sound low and warm, and without warning, he spun you, pulling you back to him with a flourish that made you gasp in surprise. You stumbled slightly, but his arms tightened around you, pulling you against his chest.

“I’d never let that happen,” he murmured, his lips dangerously close to your ear, his breath sending shivers down your spine. “You’re far too precious for me to misstep.”

Your laughter bubbled up, light and carefree, filling the space between you. It was strange how easy it was to laugh with him, how quickly he could disarm your nerves, making the weight of the evening feel like nothing.

As the music slowed, he leaned in and placed a soft kiss on your temple, the tender gesture sending a wave of warmth through you. His hand, still at your waist, slipped slightly lower, pulling you closer as he whispered, “I think you owe me a dance every day for the rest of our lives, don’t you think?”

You grinned up at him, your heart soaring. “Every day? I thought kings were supposed to be busy ruling kingdoms.”

Bucky’s eyes gleamed with affection, his lips brushing your forehead this time. “For you, I’ll always find the time.”

Before you could respond, he spun you again, your skirts flaring out around you as you twirled. You giggled, completely caught up in the moment, in him. When you came back to him, he caught you easily, his grip firm and strong, and you couldn’t stop the laughter that escaped you.

“There’s that laugh. You should smile more often. It suits you.” He smiled down at you, his gaze tender, his thumb brushing your cheek.

Your cheeks flushed under his gaze, the butterflies in your stomach refusing to settle. His eyes held something deeper, something that made you feel as though you were the only two people in the room.

Without another word, he leaned down and kissed the corner of your mouth, his lips lingering for just a moment longer than necessary. Then, as if unable to resist, he placed another kiss on your cheek, then one at your jaw, and finally one just below your ear.

“James!” you gasped, though your laughter betrayed you as you squirmed in his arms, the playful affection catching you off guard.

He laughed, a low, rich sound, his breath warm against your skin as he whispered, “I can’t help myself. You look too alluring tonight.”

You couldn’t stop the blush that crept up your neck, but you leaned into him, resting your head against his chest for just a moment, allowing yourself to melt into the warmth of his embrace. His heartbeat was steady beneath your ear, a comforting rhythm that matched the sway of your bodies as you danced.

As the music slowed to a gentle hum, Bucky’s hand slid up to cradle the back of your neck, his thumb brushing the soft skin there. He tilted your chin up, his eyes soft but filled with that same playful affection.

“Have I told you tonight how lucky I am to have you by my side?” His voice was a low whisper, meant just for you.

You smiled, feeling your heart swell. “No, this is the first.”

“I’ll make it a hundred before the night is over.” He grinned, his thumb gently tracing your jawline.

Before you could reply, he pressed his lips to yours, the kiss slow, tender, and full of unspoken promises. It wasn’t the hurried, stolen kiss from before—it was on purpose as if he were reminding you that despite all the eyes watching, this moment was just yours.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead resting against yours, he whispered, “I’ve been waiting all night to be with you.”

“And now you are,” you murmured, feeling the warmth of his breath against your lips.

His lips brushed yours again in response, a feather-light touch that left you breathless. And as the music faded and the evening stretched on, the two of you swayed together, the rest of the world melting away in the warmth of his touch and the quiet, intimate moments you shared.

For the first time all night, you weren’t just the queen and her king. You were simply Bucky and Y/N—two souls bound by something far deeper than titles or crowns.

× × × ×

From your position on the dance floor with Bucky, you caught glimpses of the other guests enjoying the festivities, but it was Captain Rogers who caught your attention. He stood near the edge of the room, his eyes drifting—not to the crowds or the dancing couples—but to Lady Natasha.

For most of the evening, you had noticed him, his gaze lingering on her with a quiet, almost tentative intensity. Steve Rogers was many things—brave, honorable, and steadfast—but when it came to matters of the heart, it seemed he was not as confident. Natasha, for her part, appeared entirely unaware, laughing and speaking with Wanda and Pepper, graceful as always.

But then there was Sharon, standing not far from Steve, her eyes on him, watching his every move. You could see it in her posture, the subtle tilt of her head, the way her fingers gripped her glass—she thought his attention was on her. It wasn’t difficult to guess where this was heading, and the tension of it made your heart race for reasons entirely different from the dance.

Beside you, Bucky must have sensed your distraction, because he leaned down and murmured, “What’s caught your eye, my Queen?”

You smiled, tilting your head slightly toward Steve. “I think Captain Rogers is about to make a move.”

Bucky followed your gaze, his lips quirking into a knowing grin. “About time. He’s been staring at her like a lost puppy all night.”

You chuckled softly, watching as Steve squared his shoulders, his resolve clearly building as he took a deep breath and started toward Natasha. The room seemed to slow, the moment stretched out as he approached her, his expression carefully composed but with a hint of nervousness beneath the surface.

But just as Steve was a few steps away from Natasha, Sharon stepped forward, a bright smile lighting up her face, clearly under the impression that he was coming for her. She reached out, her fingers brushing his arm in what she must have thought was a gentle, flirtatious gesture.

“Captain Rogers,” Sharon greeted warmly, her voice lilting. “I was just wondering if—”

Steve, clearly caught off guard, blinked at her in confusion, his eyes flickering quickly from Sharon to Natasha, who had just turned and was watching the interaction with a raised eyebrow.

Sharon’s smile faltered slightly, but she pressed on, her tone hopeful. “Would you like to dance?”

Steve's gaze flickered toward Natasha, who stood not far from him, her expression composed but with that ever-present sharpness in her eyes. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then his eyes caught sight of Sharon’s father, Lord Carter, watching the scene unfold from the corner of the room. The older man’s gaze was piercing, his posture stern and authoritative.

Steve hesitated, his throat tightening. He was well aware of the power Lord Carter wielded within the court, the weight of his opinion, and how much sway he held over many matters—both spoken and unspoken. His glance darted back to Sharon’s expectant expression, her eyes wide with anticipation.

For a heartbeat, the room seemed to hold its breath. Steve’s jaw clenched, his shoulders rigid as he fought with himself internally. And then, as if a decision was made for him, he forced a smile and nodded.

“Yes, of course.” he said simply, offering his hand.

Sharon’s face lit up with a brilliant smile, and she slipped her hand into his, her gaze flickering triumphantly to Natasha for just a fraction of a second. Lord Carter nodded approvingly from his spot, his face easing into a look of satisfaction.

But as Steve led Sharon to the dance floor, his eyes found Natasha one last time. The disappointment in her gaze, so well hidden behind her cool demeanor, pierced him deeper than any wound ever had.

Bucky’s hand remained steady on your waist as you moved together, his gaze focused on you. But your attention wavered, drawn back to where Steve and Sharon now stood together on the dance floor. The way Sharon’s lips curved into a self-satisfied smile made something coil unpleasantly in your chest.

You kept your expression serene, eyes trained on them with the same polite interest expected of a queen surveying her court. The facade was perfect—no one would guess that beneath the surface, your feelings toward Lady Carter were far from friendly.

“Everything alright?” Bucky’s low murmur brought your focus back to him. He was watching you, his eyes filled with curiosity. He hadn’t noticed the brief flicker of disapproval in your gaze, hadn’t caught the way your fingers tightened slightly against his shoulder.

You smiled up at him, soft and unassuming. “Of course,” you replied lightly, matching his steps with effortless grace. “I was simply observing our Captain. It’s not often we see him… in such a position.”

Bucky’s gaze shifted briefly over your shoulder, a smirk tugging at his lips. “No, it’s not,” he agreed, amusement lacing his tone. “Poor Steve, stuck dancing with Lady Carter when it’s clear his mind is elsewhere.”

Your smile grew a touch tighter, but you nodded, letting out a soft, almost indifferent laugh. “Yes, quite the predicament,” you mused, keeping your voice light and even.

You knew Bucky wasn’t probing further—he was simply sharing an observation, unaware of the way Sharon’s presence grated against you like nails on silk. And you intended to keep it that way.

He spun you gently, your skirts sweeping elegantly around you, and you caught sight of Sharon’s face once more. She was speaking animatedly, leaning just a bit too close to Steve, clearly basking in whatever illusion she’d spun for herself.

You looked away before Bucky could follow your line of sight, turning your gaze to meet his instead.

“Do you think they make a good match?” you asked the question casually and laced with just the right amount of interest.

Bucky shrugged slightly, his grip on you unwavering as he guided you through another smooth turn.

“Steve can decide for himself,” he replied, a neutral smile on his lips. “But it’s obvious where his heart lies.”

You hummed softly, nodding as if merely considering his words. “I suppose so,” you murmured, then shifted the topic with ease, guiding the conversation away from Steve and Sharon.

As Bucky’s attention shifted fully to your words, your expression remained the picture of calm. Yet inwardly, your gaze flickered back to the dance floor, watching as Sharon leaned in, whispering something into Steve’s ear.

Your smile didn’t falter, not even for a second. But the disdain simmering beneath it was a quiet, insistent thing, buried beneath layers of grace and composure. Sharon could have her little victory tonight—it didn’t matter.

Because you knew exactly where Steve’s gaze would turn when the music ended, and it wouldn’t be on the lady currently in his arms.

× × × ×

The carriage wheels creaked softly beneath you as they rolled over the gravel path, the only sound filling the heavy silence between you and Bucky. You sat across from each other, the space that had once felt warm now stretched and distant. Bucky’s gaze was fixed out the window, his profile bathed in the soft moonlight, but his expression was unreadable. You had tried to break the silence once or twice, but each attempt had fallen flat, met with a polite nod or a quiet murmur. The joy and excitement from the wedding already felt like a distant memory, replaced by the weight of unspoken words and something heavier that lingered between you. The estate loomed ahead, but instead of excitement, a growing unease settled deep within your chest.

The estate stretched out before you, magnificent and imposing. The manicured gardens glistened in the fading light, and the grandeur of the manor seemed to stretch endlessly, its windows glowing like embers. As the carriage halted, Bucky disembarked first, extending a hand toward you. His touch, though familiar, carried an unusual stiffness that unsettled you.

As you stepped down, you glanced at him, uncertainty swirling in your chest. "Where exactly are we?"

Bucky’s lips curved slightly, the faintest hint of amusement in his eyes. His gaze drifted to the manor. "Well, what do you think?"

You took in the estate’s breathtaking beauty, momentarily distracted by its splendor. "It’s magnificent. Who resides here?"

Bucky’s gaze softened as he turned back to you. "I had it refurbished just for you."

Your heart stuttered in your chest, a warm flutter of surprise catching you off guard. "This is our home?" you asked, hope threading through your voice. "James..."

But Bucky’s expression faltered, his tone more measured. "It’s your home."

Confusion washed over you, your brow furrowing. "My home? What does that mean?"

"This is where you will live." Bucky’s eyes flickered briefly, avoiding yours.

A chill ran through you as his words sank in. "I’m not sure I follow," you said slowly, your voice laced with uncertainty. "If this is my house, then surely it is ours as well?"

Bucky’s face remained impassive, though his tone was distant. "Technically, St. Vincent’s Palace is our residence. But here, this is where you will stay."

Your pulse quickened. "And where will you stay?" you asked, feeling the weight of his reply before he even spoke.

Bucky’s jaw tightened slightly. "I have an estate in Annecy."

A sinking feeling settled in your stomach. "So, you intend to live in Annecy?"

"Yes."

"And I’m to live here?"

"Yes."

Your chest tightened as you stared at him, disbelief clouding your thoughts. "But it’s our wedding night."

"It’s late," Bucky said, calmly, almost too calm. "You’ve been traveling. You should go inside, meet the staff, rest. You’ll need your strength for the coming days."

You shook your head, frustration bubbling to the surface. "No, James. It’s our wedding night. We’ve just been married." Your voice dropped, your cheeks flushing slightly. "Aren’t we supposed to spend the night together? Is that not what married couples do?"

Bucky’s expression hardened, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Are you asking me to perform my marital duties to you?"

You blinked, caught off guard. "I’m not asking anything," you replied, your voice wavering. "I just thought... Isn’t this the night we’re meant to spend together? My governess always said that’s how it’s done. . . That it’s important."

He let out a heavy sigh, the tension in his shoulders palpable. "Very well," he muttered, turning abruptly toward the entrance. "I’ll stay then."

"James!" you called, quickening your pace to follow him.

"I said I’ll stay," he repeated curtly, his strides long and deliberate. "Are you coming or not?"

The staff clapped politely as you entered the grand foyer together, but your mind was elsewhere, trying to make sense of what was happening.

"James, slow down," you pleaded, your voice rising as you hurried after him. "I can’t keep up with you."

He came to a sudden halt, turning to face you, frustration etched into every line of his face. "You wanted me in the bedroom. Isn’t that what you were asking for?"

You froze at his words, the intensity of his gaze making your heart race. "No."

His brow furrowed. "No?"

"Not if you’re going to act like this," you said, your voice trembling. "You’re upset. What have I done? If I’ve offended you in any way, I’m sorry—"

Bucky’s expression softened, but there was still tension in his stance, his left hand flexing. "You haven’t done anything wrong," he said quietly, though his voice carried the weight of something unspoken. "It’s just... I’m comfortable in Annecy."

Your heart clenched. "Then let’s go to Annecy together."

Bucky shook his head. "No. You’re staying here."

"Why?" you asked, searching his face for answers. "You don’t want me to go with you?"

"This is your home," he said firmly, his tone final.

You felt the distance between you grow with every word. "My home. . ."

"Yes."

Silence stretched between you, thick and heavy. "I see."

Bucky exhaled, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he nodded. "Good. Then everything is settled."

But nothing felt settled. Not at all. "No. No, it is not settled." you said, your voice cracking in utter confusion. One moment he couldn’t get his hands off you, this sudden change was too difficult to let go. "James, is this what our marriage will be? Us living separately?"

"Yes," he replied, his voice steady but detached.

"Why?" you whispered, tears threatening to well in your eyes.

He hesitated for a moment before answering, "I thought it would be... easier this way."

"For whom?" you asked, the pain in your voice evident. "For you? Or for me?"

Bucky’s patience frayed, his tone sharpening. "I’m not having this discussion with you."

You stepped closer, your voice pleading. "I just want to understand. Please, tell me why—"

"I don’t need to explain anything!" Bucky’s voice thundered, his frustration boiling over. "I’m the one who decides, and I have decided. Are you forgetting that I am your KING?!"

His words hit you like a physical blow, your heart shattering. You stepped back, your voice trembling as you dropped into a low curtsy.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty," you said quietly, your head bowed in deference. "I thought you were just James."

Bucky’s expression fell, regret flickering across his face. He reached out for you, his voice softer now. "Y/N, please—"

But you pulled back, avoiding his touch. The guard you thought you’d lowered, the tentative trust you were building—everything slammed back up, a fortress around your heart. You were foolish enough to think you were getting to know him better.

It was clear now how wrong you were.

"May I take my leave, Your Majesty? Or do you have more to say?" Your voice was brittle.

Bucky’s hand dropped to his side, a look of defeat crossing his features. "Y/N... you don’t understand, this is for the best."

You swallowed hard, forcing a brittle smile as you nodded. "Of course, Your Majesty," you said, your voice barely above a whisper. "Whatever you wish. I shall rest now. I wish you a safe trip to Annecy."

With that, you turned and walked away, the echo of your footsteps haunting the grand hall as you left him standing there, the distance between you stretching wider than ever.

Love always blew up in your face, shattering whatever good you’d dared to believe in. You were a fool to believe that it wouldn’t go south in the worst way this quickly.

Each step you took, you buried the yearning, the desperation to reach out and demand more from him—from what you could be together.

Instead, you rebuilt the walls. You raised the drawbridge.

And you vowed to tread carefully with your emotions when it comes to him.

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confessedlyfannish · 1 year ago

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DPxDC Prompt

Danny has always been able to manage his obsession with the help of his human half & also because a variety of urges were running through him when he died - curiosity (the desire to explore), service (the desire to be of use, to fix), and his overall innate nature, protectiveness (to protect this new, loving family he's found, to protect his little brother, no matter the cost)

-and underneath it all, buried deep down and an admittance he will never speak is his desire for power, because with power comes the ability to accomplish all of the above.

Still, he has seen what power does to people, to his Grandfather, and then what power had done to him, in a future where no human half had tempered his urges and his desire for power was doubled when he combined with the ghost of his godfather, obsession meeting obsession.

So he keeps himself on a tight leash except for the day he embraces Power and Ends Pariah, which is fine because the power from the suit is temporary and he still has no idea the dark future that awaits him, believes that he can temper himself. But he is something wild and dark and feral when he goes after Pariah, calling upon lessons from a past life and not hesitating to go for the kill in a way that makes Vlad, the only true witness, hesitant around him forevermore, a sliver of fear in his eyes that he cannot mask.

If he had known defeating Pariah would mean inheriting the crown, he never would've done it. Because with the power of the Crown and the Ring comes again his inability to fight his urges - not for more power, he has plenty, but to protect.

For Clockwork, for the Ancients, a King that will Protect his Realm is the ideal. But the ramifications for Danny are clear to his family the moment he wrenches Ellie from the Earth and into a room in The Keep for a week until her cheeks are flush with ectoplasm but also tears and Jazz and Maddie have successfully talked him through how safety must also mean happiness. To this day they do not know if it was their words that eventually penetrated his mind or his power settling. But he still struggles to allow them their freedom, and it is apparent to all who love him.

And so they figure out ways to manage. Systems. None of his Beloved, his Fraid will ever willingly step into danger. They will give him consistent updates, they will provide tech that manages their vitals. They will visit and allow him trespass in turn. They will sleep in his bed (less necessary, but said with a wink and an errant hand that shows they are willing to make the sacrifice).

And deep within the Zone, on one of his routine checks with nary a soul in a sight, Danny allows himself to curl into a ball and cry. Wail. Because he knows he can never go in search of his brother, nor his father, the Batman. The one reunion he craved, because with power came the ability to protect, even from one as horrible as Ra's Al Ghul, is the same reason he must deny himself. Because Damian Wayne and Bruce Wayne will always put themselves in danger. And if he comes to them, he will never let them go.

#dpxdc #dp x dc prompt #dp x dc crossover #dp x dc #dp x dc au #danny phantom #damian wayne #danyal al ghul #fic prompt #seriously go ham guys I am loving these aus

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s-brant · 2 years ago

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Judas

Upon returning to King’s Landing, an unexpected betrothal is arranged to make peace between Princess Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent’s children.

13k (18+)

Warnings: strong language, sexual themes, arranged marriage, and violence. (smut in part two, stay tuned).

The last time she saw Aemond, they were mere children.

It was the morning after Leanor Velaryon’s funeral at Driftmark, not even a full week following the passing of his dear sister, Laena, and she was watching from the saddle strapped across the back of her dragon as he and his mother strolled along the beach side by side. She made a point of doting on her young son more than she had in the past due to the loss of his eye. Her arm was draped over his shoulder, her hand rubbing up and down his arm, and, yet, he didn’t seem consoled by her sweet touch. All he did was stare off at the horizon, his face hardened by the years of cruelty from his own brother and the prospect of having to face more ridicule due to his disfigurement.

That was the final glimpse she got of him for years, and, since moving to Dragonstone with her family, she hadn’t been back to visit King’s Landing once. Instead, she spent her days flying on dragonback, committing to her studies, and learning to fight with a sword from the best warrior she knew. Her father.

While all of her siblings refer to him as their father due to the union between him and their mother, Y/N says it with a certainty none can question. It wasn’t something Rhaenyra ever meant to admit to her. In fact, it wasn’t her mother who told her at all. It was Daemon. After an afternoon spent fighting, Valyrian steel clashing against Valyrian steel in a symphony of practiced violence, she asked him the question that would confirm the suspicions she had for most of her young life.

Jace, Lucerys, and Joffrey were sired by the late Sir Harwin Strong, that much she knew from the countless rumors hurled at them as well as his consistent presence when they were small, but she knew she was not his nor Laenor’s. It was an open secret amongst all who knew them. And, when confronted with it, Daemon met her with honesty. It was less to do with her and more to do with him, however. He couldn’t bear to pretend she belonged to anyone but him, so he told her.

“Issa drēje, ñuha dōna riña,” he said in their native tongue to keep any guards nearby from eavesdropping.

It is true, my sweet girl.

He tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear in a display of affection not entirely uncommon for his favorite child. It was no secret that he favored her most. After all, she was the heir to the throne, and she retained the very best of his and Rhaenyra’s respective personalities. Then, of course, there was the small fact that she was his, not Harwin’s. He loved his step-children, of course, but she was his most cherished creation of Rhaenyra’s by far.

“Nyke gīmigon istia daor jaelagon naejot rȳbagon bisa, yn i’ll va moriot sagon drēje lēda ao. Ñuha lēkia refused naejot wed zirȳla naejot nyke skori ziry ryptan, sīr ziry teptan zirȳla naejot laenor naejot ruaragon ziry bē,” he explained. I know you must not want to hear this, but I’ll always be honest with you. My brother refused to wed her to me when he heard, so he gave her to Laenor to cover it up.

He then looked at her, and she held his gaze without balking from the intense stare that many unfortunate souls met before taking their last breaths. To her, he wasn’t a monster. He was a ghost she spent her whole childhood chasing after. She still couldn’t believe he was real.

“Yn nyke va moriot jeldan naejot sagon iā kepa naejot ao. Gaomagon daor mirre másino bona.” But I always wanted to be a father to you. Do not ever question that.

With that, a grin broke out on her face, and she nodded along with tear-filled eyes. They never spoke of it again after they returned to the castle where Rhaenyra and the boys were settled at the table for dinner together. It didn’t have to be said aloud again, though. Now that she knew for certain, she didn’t need to dwell on it any longer.

For Aemond, the days they spent at Driftmark for the funeral of Laena Velaryon were a conflicting period of time. For Y/N, it was the beginning of her happiness. All she wanted was to know the truth, to know her father, and that was the first time she was allowed to.

Now, she isn’t sure if she’s as happy as she once was.

The breeze blows her hair from her shoulders as she descends upon King’s Landing atop Vermithor. Like Aemond, she too was raised without a dragon. It was something they once bonded over as children until he nearly bashed her younger brother’s face in with a rock the night he claimed Vhagar. Shortly after their return to Dragonstone, she made it her life’s mission to claim the beast who dwelled in its solitary lair on the island.

Flying settles her nerves better than anything else. Wine tends to make her wallow in sorrow more than anything, talking with her parents only ends in lectures or reassurance she does not seek, and since she is not a male, she cannot frequent brothels without consequence like her brothers could to relieve stress. The only retreat she has is the sky.

Seeing that the rest of her family left by ship ahead of her, she doesn’t expect to see any others on dragonback nearby. As she scans the sky, she sees nothing but the city spread out ahead of her and the endless expanse of ocean beneath. That is, of course, until she sees the shadow passing over her head.

Bigger than her own by a decent margin, she knows that the dragon casting a shadow onto her cannot by any other than the largest in existence. She doesn’t make the mistake of tipping her head back to take a look, however. She makes the choice to feign indifference rather than give in to the demand for attention Aemond shows through flying so close overhead. Unlike her brothers, he doesn’t frighten her, and that small difference in attitude is certain to annoy him.

Vhagar swoops down in a steep dive in front of her, and she hardly has the chance to steer Vermithor out to the right to avoid being smacked with the other dragon’s long tail.

Sensing his sudden state of unease, she reaches down to stroke her gloved hand along the surface of his rough skin and says to him with the same tone her mother uses to soothe her in times of distress, “Lykiri, Vermithor. Lykiri.” She scoffs at the sight of a man with long silver hair to match hers riding on Vhagar’s back. “He poses no threat.”

As expected, Aemond does not taunt them any more than this. The sound of his dragon’s wings flapping in the wind overpowers that of the waves crashing onto the land as they both make their way to the Dragonpit. The folk living in the city whip their head around to catch sight of the giant creatures descending upon them with equal parts fear and enchantment. Targaryens are closer to Gods than men, so what can mere mortals do but watch as evidence of their superior existence shoots through the sky on a set of gargantuan wings?

With Vermithor promptly landed on the sandy ground as far from Vhagar and her rider as possible, Y/N dismounts him with a tired sigh, muscles aching from hours of riding, and climbs down onto unsteady feet. She greets her escort, Ser Harold, with a bright smile despite Aemond’s antics, as well as the reason for visiting in the first place, weighing heavily on her shoulders.

Queen Alicent means to call into question Jacaerys’ inheritance of Driftmark in the absence of Lord Corlys, and, by extension, call the legitimacy of all of Rhaenyra’s offspring into question as well. Y/N remains mostly unconcerned by this. She knows in her heart that she is a trueborn Targaryen, and whatever Alicent may have to say about her brothers will do nothing to change it. So long as King Viserys remains steadfast in his declaration of his daughter and her children as heirs to the throne, there shouldn’t be much to fear.

Just as Aemond turns from his beloved dragon with the intention of beginning the journey back to the Red Keep on foot, the sound of Y/N’s voice halts him.

“Hello, Uncle,” she says with a pointed stare.

He shows no issue with staring right back at her.

“Niece,” he says with no real emotion to the word.

“It has been a while since we last met.”

With one glance, she deduces that he has changed in the time they’ve spent apart. For one, the bloodied scar she saw covered by bandages in the days after Lucerys maimed him has been healed and hidden behind a leather eyepatch. Whatever it is that lurks beneath, she hasn’t a clue. The rest that is visible to her searching eyes is surprisingly agreeable.

He has a strong, sharp jaw, pretty lips, and he stands tall above her height with the sinewy figure of a fine swordsman. As much as it pains her to admit it to herself, he has grown into a handsome man. If it weren’t for the purposefully off-putting demeanor, ancient dragon, and the intimidation accompanying his eyepatch, there’d likely be droves of highborn maidens begging their fathers to set up an advantageous match with the prince.

His stoic face displays no reaction she can discern before he says, “It has, Princess,” and walks off without deigning to speak another word to her.

The first two hours of her arrival are spent becoming acquainted with her chambers and washing the stink of dragon, as her dear grandsire always called it, from her body before formally greeting Queen Alicent and reconnecting with her parents. For as long as she could get away with, she submerged herself in the in-ground, marble bathing tub flooded to the brim with steaming water and gazed out of the opened windows with daydreams of flying back home on Vermithor at once. The citrus-scented oil one of the handmaidens poured into the water washes the sweat and proof of her flight from Dragonstone from her long hair and skin. By the time she dries off and allows the ladies waiting outside of the bathing room to help her dress, she looks brand new.

Her hair is half-up, half-down with simple braids keeping it from falling into her face, and her dress is one of her favorites that was brought on the ship with the rest of her bare necessity belongings. It used to belong to her mother—rich, red fabric with a neckline that hangs off the shoulders with a gold belt cinching her waist and cuffs that circle her wrists. The sleeves are cut open at the center to display her arms, and she cannot help but smile at the sight of her reflection.

Navigating the familiar halls of the Red Keep keeps her occupied on her way to find her parents and brothers. On her way, she passes many servants and guards, all of whom she offers a tight-lipped smile, and walks until she reaches the gardens, then the training yard at the front gate to the castle grounds where she finally spots her brothers.

“Jace! Luc!” she shouts to garner their attention and hurries down the steps to meet Jacaerys in a tight embrace.

She only speaks again once they’re pulling apart, one arm wrapping around Lucerys to pull him into her side, “I missed you both terribly. Dragonstone is not the same without the rest of you residing there.”

Both of them grin at her, their brown eyes crinkling at the sides, and try not to pay attention to the whispers of the onlookers in the yard who call attention to the differences between the boys and their older sister. When standing beside each other, it couldn’t be any more clear. Where their hair is dark, hers is paler than snow. Where they are shorter than their uncles and step-father, she is taller than them both and carries an aura of otherworldliness her mother passed along to her.

At the sight of Lucerys’ gaze shifting toward a clustered group of three talking amongst themselves while looking at them, Jace speaks before she gets the chance, “Pay them no mind, brother.”

Her hand strokes through her younger brother's brunette hair as though to soothe him the same way she had done with her dragon hours prior, and she nods.

“Come, let us watch the men train while you catch me up on what I missed on your journey here. Tell me, did mother and father bicker the whole time? Seasickness makes her quite short with him, and he detests traveling by ship rather than dragonback.”

With that, the three of them launch into a conversation revolving around the events of their voyage here. Due to her combined seasickness and pregnancy-induced illness, their mother was short with everyone, not just Daemon. Jacaerys said that when Joffrey decided to jest with her by chasing her down while holding a rat he found at the bottom of the ship, it took Daemon shooing everyone, the rat included, from their room to prevent her shouting at everyone in her path. As sweet as she is, even their mother has limits when it comes to her boys behaving less like princes and more like pests.

Y/N is still giggling to herself at the thought of it as they come to a stop around the edges of the small crowd that has gathered to watch Ser Criston Cole fight with another man. Through the bodies forming a wall between them and the action, it takes the Princess murmuring, “Excuse me,” softly a few times for her and the boys to reach a decent spot.

The second she gains a clear view, her smile drops.

Though her brothers may not recognize him from behind as she does since they have not seen him in years, she knows it’s him the second she catches a glimpse of his hair swaying with his body’s sharp movements. Her earlier assumptions are quickly proven true. A fine swordsman indeed, she realizes as Aemond spins around with his sword raised at Ser Criston’s neck with an expression that takes pride in his victory before the knight can even form the words.

“Well done, my Prince,” Ser Criston says, panting.

The sword is lowered from his neck without another word from Aemond, and, just as he thinks he might ask Cole to go again, he catches sight of her on the edge of the crowd. Of course, he has no choice but to notice her first. Among the people watching them, she is one of few with hair the same shade as his. Another huge small factor contributing to him noticing her first would have to be her being the only woman present. Although adorned in fine clothing and jewelry fit for a Princess, she looks as though she is comfortable where she stands in the midst of clashing swords and leering men.

His eye follows the neckline of her dress that leaves her neck and shoulders exposed, and he finds his grip on the hilt of his sword tightening involuntarily. His jaw clenches at the delicate slope of her neck giving away to her shoulders. For a second, she finds it difficult to breathe. When pinned down beneath his intense stare, what else could one do but go still and quiet and wait for chaos to ensue?

He shifts his focus to the boys flanking her on either side.

“Nephews,” he says by way of greeting, “Have you come to train?”

She watches in her periphery as Jace opens and closes his mouth, at a loss for words, and almost speaks up on their behalf to say their mother is expecting them back soon, but they are saved. The doors to the castle gates open with a thunderous rumble, and everyone’s attention turns from where it had been transfixed upon her siblings to the man who strolls in.

Vaemond Velaryon.

Under her breath, Y/N mutters a hardly audible, “Of course,” with a scoff nobody else surrounding them notices. Except for one. It shouldn’t surprise her that Aemond picked up on her disdain for Corlys’ nephew whom she knows without a doubt will aid Alicent in her attempts to steal her brother’s inheritance from him. Her uncle’s eye remains locked on her as she watches Vaemond walk up the path leading to the castle, and it isn’t until the older man disappears from view that she notices his staring.

Right when Aemond expects her to avert her eyes with the same reproach her brothers have for him, she does the very opposite. How he could ever expect the daughter of Daemon Targaryen to shy away from a challenge, he doesn’t know, but he finds himself surprised all the same.

“Apologies, my Prince, but our mother is expecting us back soon. She sent me to fetch my brothers,” she says without breaking their stare. “Perhaps you may train together at another time.”

She ushers the two younger boys away with a hand on each of their arms without allowing their uncle to get another word. Payback, she supposes, for his curt attitude with her back at the Dragonpit. Over her shoulder, she casts him a glare that could cut a weaker man to the bone. It conveys every word she has yet to say to him, telling him, “If you lay a hand on either of them, I will cut your heart out just as my brother did with your eye.” Her hair swishes in the afternoon breeze as she turns to look ahead of her once more and leaves him standing with Ser Criston Cole in the training yard.

“The Princess is the very image of her mother, is she not?” Ser Criston asks, drawing his attention back to him.

Coming from him in particular, that isn’t the compliment those around them assume it to be. Alicent and Ser Criston have never spoken candidly of what incited their shared distaste for Rhaenyra other than her passing off her bastards as trueborn princes, but Aemond is not a fool. He can sense it in the way Ser Criston speaks and acts regarding his aunt and her children that the reason lies deeper than moral outrage over bastard children.

All Aemond offers in response is a quiet hum in agreement as he sheathes his sword.

The rest of the night following their run-in with Prince Aemond was uneventful for the most part.

Though she did lie to allow her brothers a quick escape from the man who has been yearning to exact revenge against them for years, the first thing she did was find her mother. She and Daemon were coming back to their chambers after speaking with Queen Alicent, and their faces lit up at the sight of their daughter despite how difficult it was to see Viserys in such a state of suffering earlier in the day.

Rhaenyra ran her hands down the sleeves of her dress, feeling the years-old fabric slipping through her fingers, and said with a nostalgic smile, “You look beautiful, my love.”

It was something she heard from her mother at a constant rate, but it warmed her heart even if it were the millionth time she heard the words spoken to her in that soft, caring tone of voice. A moment later, Daemon placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze, murmuring something about how good it was to see her.

Now, as she sits at her mother's feet and allows her to braid her hair before she’s off to her chambers to sleep for the night, she flips through a book she found in the library after dinner and becomes lost in her thoughts.

The way Aemond looked at her today in the training yard…It was strange. Not strange in the sense that she has never seen a man look at her like that before. She has. In fact, many men far too old and below her station have looked at her like that and met the glares of her fiercely protective parents who, by the grace of the Gods, agreed to her wish to put off marriage until it became absolutely necessary. No, what made the way Aemond looked at her strange had less to do with her lacking experience in witnessing men admire her beauty and more to do with the fact that it was him.

Of course, he is merely a man. Many gossiping court ladies she overheard when she was little said they are more susceptible to the temptation of the flesh than women are, but she’s never felt the way she did when she caught him staring. There was a rush of heat blooming between her thighs under the skirts of her dress, and she could hardly stand to hold his gaze for the duration of the moment. It felt wrong to feel that way when he was looking at her brothers like they were prey to kill seconds after staring at her.

“I visited Helaena and her children today,” Y/N says suddenly to distract herself from her current train of thought. “I suppose they liked me. They kept pulling at my skirts to get my attention as Helaena and I spoke. She is a wonderful mother to our little cousins.”

Though she couldn’t see it, Rhaenyra smiles and says, “You will make a wonderful mother too one day.” A long pause. “Did you see your uncles as well?”

She shakes her head, which causes her mother to tighten her grip on the strands of hair she’s braiding down her back, then offers a murmured apology before going on to respond to the question.

“Well, I saw one of them. Aemond landed with Vhagar in the Dragonpit when I first arrived. Then, at the training yard, he spoke briefly to Jace and Luc. Thank the Gods I did not have the misfortune of running into Aegon.”

The consistent pulling and twisting of Rhaenyra’s fingers braiding her hair goes still for a moment.

“You do not prefer Prince Aegon, then?”

She scoffs.

“He is a miserable cunt.”

In the connected room, the sound of Daemon’s wry laughter in reaction to the insult echoes and reaches their ears with ease. The hatred her father has for every Hightower in the Red Keep is not hidden from anyone, least of all her, so when she hears him laugh, she cannot help but grin to herself.

“Y/N…” her mother chides.

“I know it is not nice to say such things, but everyone knows it to be true. Helaena is the one I prefer of all your siblings. She is kind to everyone. Aemond is…tolerable, I suppose. A fine swordsman. I prefer both of them to Aegon.”

Rhaenyra hums in consideration of her candid statement.

“As do I.”

It only takes another five or so minutes for her to secure the long braid in order to prevent it from coming undone in her sleep before sending her off to bed. A kiss is pressed to the top of her head as a goodbye, then she is escorted to her chambers by one of the guards stationed outside of her parent’s door.

The throne room is flooded with people by the middle of the next day.

On one side, she, her parents, and her brothers stand before a crowd of curious observers who will surely gossip about what they are to see here today. On the other stands Queen Alicent, Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond. As always, Alicent is dressed in one of her finest green dresses to hammer the extent of their division home as if it weren’t already clear enough, while Rhaenyra wears one of black and red. Her brothers and father wore black by coincidence while Y/N, ever the loyal daughter, picked out a gown to match her mother as closely as she could.

The sight of her decked out in full red and black Targaryen regalia prompted Aegon to snort an unbecoming laugh when they walked in as a family. Alicent was quick to quiet him out of fear that those surrounding them would hear and look upon them unfavorably over his rude behavior. Meanwhile, Aemond simply stared.

She can feel it from across the room despite her attempts to ignore it—that same heated gaze he set upon her yesterday is back. If she weren’t so determined to her feigned act of indifference toward him, it would make her want to squirm in discomfort. It’s impossible to focus on what venomous words Vaemond spouts about her family and why he should inherit Driftmark in place of Jacaerys when she can feel Aemond’s eye on her.

To his credit, he looks away whenever her father scans his gaze around the room. If Daemon saw one of Alicent Hightower’s sons ogling his daughter, who knows what he may be compelled to do? So, every time Daemon’s focus strays from the man pleading his case to the Hand sitting atop the throne, he makes certain to look at anyone but her. Whenever her father’s eyes return to the front of the room, however, he goes straight back to it.

The only thing that manages to break his stare is the sound of the doors to the great hall being pushed open in the midst of Rhaenyra’s speech.

A masculine voice booms through the open space of the hall, “King Viserys of House Targaryen, first of his name!” Every person in the room gasps or takes a deep inhale of some sort at the sight of the frail old man that appears in the doorway, stumbling into the room with a mask covering half of his deteriorating face and a cane in hand. “King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and protector of the realm!”

It is painful to watch him struggle his way down the length of the room, and, considering that, she cannot imagine how much worse it must be for him. Every breath he takes is labored and shallow, heaving for air that evades him at every rise and fall of his chest. The side of his face visible to them all appears pale with dark circles and bags beneath his eyes, leaving her to wonder how much worse the other side could be to necessitate the mask concealing it. It has been years since she last saw her grandsire, and, though she knew he was ill, his current state is worse than she ever could have imagined.

Y/N watches with wide eyes as he approaches where Rhaenyra and Otto Hightower stand on either side of the room with the throne to bisect them in a line of demarcation. There are only two sides as of now—green and black—yet here he stands at the center to bind them together with what little strength he has left in his weary body.

His head cranes to the side to face Otto.

Viserys says, “I will sit the throne today,” and that is that.

It doesn’t get any easier for his family to watch him on his way up the stairs. And though he refuses the help of the guards, he does not tell his brother to back off when he appears at his side to retrieve the crown that slid off of his balding head and escort him the rest of the way to the throne. A soft smile crosses her face at the sight of her father placing the crown onto his head, and she welcomes him back to her side with her hand extended when he walks down the stairs with it never having left her face.

Feeling his rough hand in hers steadies her for what comes next. For having to endure the glares from Vaemond and her uncles when Viserys declares her brother the rightful heir to Driftmark. For having to listen to the hushed whispers that always occur at the sight of Jacaerys and Lucerys’ dark hair and features that resemble that of their biological father.

As the king calls the Princess Rhaenys to speak on behalf of her missing husband, her grip tightens enough for Daemon to give it a reassuring squeeze back. It tells her not to worry. It tells her that he and her mother will die before they let anything happen to her or her dear brothers.

Rhaenys stands with her hands folded in front of her and holds her chin high as she says to her cousin, “It was ever my husband’s will that Driftmark pass through Ser Laenor to his trueborn son, Jacaerys Velaryon. His mind never changed, nor did my support of him.” A knowing glance is cast at where Rhaenyra stands side by side with her eldest son, and, in response, Y/N’s mother nods. Just once. “As a matter of fact, the Princess Rhaenyra has just informed me of her desire to marry her sons, Jace and Luc, to Lord Corlys’ granddaughters, Baela and Rhaena. A proposal to which I heartily agree.”

Y/N’s gaze immediately turns to find her father with as much subtlety as possible, and he gives her a nod similar to the one her mother gave Rhaenys to confirm that they plotted this together. It’s difficult not to smirk to herself at the mere thought of the panic Queen Alicent must surely feel as a result of this. She can always count on her parents to be one step ahead, can’t she?

“Well,” Viserys starts, “the matter is settled. Again. I hereby reaffirm Prince Jacaerys of House Velaryon as heir to Driftmark, the Driftwood Throne, and the next Lord of the Tides.”

Alicent’s eyes avert to the ground in what Y/N guesses is disbelief and shame. Shame for her husband who has never, not once in the course of their marriage, chosen her and their children over himself. Although she admires Viserys’ love for his only daughter, Y/N cannot pretend to miss the sorrow evident on his wife’s face. Still, she finds it hard to have much sympathy for the woman who came after her mother with a knife years ago and actively tried to supplant her brother in the line of succession. Then, there’s the matter of Aegon. In her eyes, a mother who shields her perverted son from the consequences of his actions is no better than the son himself. If Y/N is to bear her future husband a son, she will be sure to raise him the way Rhaenyra has raised her honorable brothers.

Across the room, she catches Aemond’s eye once more and tries to refrain from shifting in place so as to not alert her father of the matter. Seeing that Daemon is rather protective of her, she wouldn’t want to spark any more chaos today than there already has been. This time, however, Aemond does not look at her with the same desire from yesterday. He assesses her from top to bottom, sizing her and her family up as the threat they’ve proven themselves to be.

Their attention is quickly called elsewhere when Viserys speaks again.

“It seems I have another announcement to make. A joyous one, to be sure.”

Her grandsire looks at her with a fond smile, and she can feel dread curling in the pit of her belly like an asp readying itself to strike.

“After speaking with the Princess Rhaenyra, my daughter and I have reached an agreement regarding the betrothal of her eldest daughter.” Imperceptibly to anyone but her, Daemon’s hand tightens its grasp on hers at the announcement that neither of them expected. “I hereby announce the betrothal of Princess Y/N of House Targaryen and my son, Prince Aemond of House Targaryen.”

The room erupts with the sound of gasps and whispers from the observers as well as a few members of the family who hadn’t been clued into the plans of her mother and grandsire. With a quick look around the room, it seems that nobody was informed ahead of time, not even Aemond’s mother. It’s hard for her to think, let alone conjure the ability to speak in order to whisper to her father not to make a scene or challenge the word of his brother. All she can do is try to breathe as deeply as possible through the shock and stare across the room at her uncle as though to ask him if he knew.

By the way he looks back at her with an equal amount of surprise, or, at least, as much as his inexpressive face will allow him to display, he did not know either.

What followed the announcement of her betrothal to Aemond mattered little to her. She did not bat an eye at her father’s cold-blooded murder of Vaemond, nor did she say a word to anyone as she walked in step with her family out of the great hall. To her mother’s terror, Y/N did not make a face or utter anything on the journey to her parents’ shared quarters with her brothers following closely behind.

She has never known her daughter to be a closed-mouthed woman. Growing up, it was something she prided herself on as a young mother—that ferocity, that fire—and admired about her only daughter. That is why Y/N’s silence is troubling by comparison to her typical demeanor. For someone who inherited her temper from her father, someone who has the blood of the dragon flowing in their veins, silence is a precursor to deadly rage.

And when the door closes behind Lucerys, the dragon is unleashed.

“How dare you?” she spits the words with tears welling up in her eyes. “You’ve damned me to a marriage with a man who couldn’t be bothered to speak more than a few words to me after years spent apart! I don’t wish to live here without you, and father, and my brothers, it’s like being thrown to the wolves! Dragonstone is where I’m happiest, mother, you know that!”

She stands in front of her entire family, excluding her youngest brothers Aegon and Viserys who are being tended to by her mother's handmaidens, pleading her case as though she is being put on trial. Jacaerys and Lucerys know better than to offer a comforting touch or words of encouragement at the risk of getting caught in the crossfire, but the sympathy visible on their faces is more than enough to offer the support she needs. The two of them know better than anyone why she is upset at the idea of her betrothal to Aemond. After all, it was Jace whose head he nearly bashed in during a fight years ago and Luc who cut his eye out in defense of him.

Rhaenyra attempts to reach out to her only to have the touch rejected with a gentle shove to the arm to prevent her from holding her daughter’s hand.

“My love,” she says softly, sighing, “I know this is not what you would have envisioned for yourself, but I needed a plan. With you and Aemond wed, with him as your prince consort and the father of your heirs when you ascend to the Iron Throne, the division between our families will cease.” When Y/N scowls at her, she adds, “I took your feelings into consideration to the best of my ability. Your grandsire proposed that you and Aegon be betrothed years ago, but I refused him as a result of your desire to wait until you were older. Then, I proposed Jacaerys and Helaena wed, but Alicent refused. This was the best I could do to benefit both you and the realm.”

The younger woman’s jaw clenches with rage as she forces herself to remain civil and not spew the first nasty words that come to mind. She does not want to say things she will regret later in the heat of the moment, but, fuck, how can any of them expect her to remain calm after what Viserys and Rhaenyra did? Her fists clenched with enough force to break the skin of her palm with the blunt edges of her nails.

Y/N turns her heated gaze to Daemon and asks, “Will you do nothing to stop this, father? You hate the Hightowers just as much, if not more, than me. Do you not give a shit about your daughter being used as a political pawn by your brother?”

Although angry himself, Daemon’s eyes narrow at her abrasive tone of voice.

“Watch your tongue,” he warns. There’s a pause during which he raises his brows at her as if in a challenge, then relaxes his face when she sighs in reluctant obedience. “Your mother and I will discuss this matter privately. As of the present moment, what the King says is law, and you will mind your tone when speaking to your mother.”

Beneath the formality of his words, she can sense his ire for the decision Rhaenyra excluded him from making with her and Viserys. She knew as soon as it was announced that her parents would be going back and forth in argument until the late hours of the night over it, but her mother is not a closed-mouthed woman either. Seeing that she is the heir to the throne, her word holds more weight than his, and if she wishes for her daughter to marry Prince Aemond, it will happen regardless of Daemon’s protests.

Y/N presses her hand to her forehead and turns to face the wall, rubbing her temple as if that will do anything to soothe the thoughts racing through her head. If not even her father has the power to protect her from her fate, what else is she to do but surrender herself to it? Instantly, the wheels begin to spin in her head, and she conjures up the conditions it will take for her to bind herself to Aemond One-Eye.

She turns around and wills her face into a mask of composed poise.

“I have conditions.”

Her mother cannot help but mutter, “Oh, Seven Hells,” under her breath to herself while her father suppresses a chuckle.

“I will do my duty and marry Prince Aemond for the sake of the realm, but I will not forfeit my standards. I know Queen Alicent will want her son wed in the Grand Sept in the tradition of her faith, but I demand a traditional Valyrian wedding as well. Whichever comes first matters not to me, but I won’t forsake the tradition of our ancestors.”

Since childhood, she has dreamt of marrying her eventual husband in the tradition of her house just as her mother did with her father, and no matter how insistent Alicent may be, that dream isn’t one she is prepared to give up without a fight. If she is being taken from Dragonstone and given to one of her sons, the least she can do is accommodate her wishes for her own wedding day.

Rhaenyra offers her a tight-lipped smile.

“Your father and I will support you in that decision, I swear it.” She then asks, “What else?”

“There will be no bedding ceremony. That is sacred, and private, and should remain between us as husband and wife.”

The only thing she can imagine being more mortifying than having to wed a man who does not care for her is having to bed him in front of her grandsire, as well as other grown men and women she would prefer not see her in a state of undress. Not to mention, she would have to resort to burning Aegon to a crisp with Vermithor to avoid him pestering her until the end of her days over what he would witness in the ceremony.

“I agree,” her mother says. “I have no doubts that you and Prince Aemond will fulfill your duty. I see no need for a bedding ceremony either.”

With the silence that follows, the realization that what’s happening to her is, in fact, real nearly knocks her off her feet. Until now, she didn’t have to face it head-on without the buffer of her argument with her parents and the conditions for her agreeing to the marriage between her. That dread she felt in her belly has now spread to the rest of her body and holds her hostage. Yet, through the panic, she recalls the way he looked at her when they were in the training yard and hopes that basic level of desire will be a sturdy enough foundation for a functioning marriage.

She isn’t a fool. She knows that her marriage will not be loving, nor will it be what she wanted for herself in the past, but her mother is right. It is the best opportunity to keep the peace between their families, and marrying Aemond is a better alternative to what could have been with Aegon had her mother agreed with the King those years ago.

“Well, then, I suppose it’s already decided, is it not?” Before either of her parents can get a word in, she turns to her brothers and asks, “Jace, Luc, would you mind escorting me to my quarters? I wish to be alone until we are called to supper with the family.”

They both nod.

When it comes time to walk into the dining room, Y/N isn’t sure if she wants to enter.

An hour or so after she left her parents in their chambers, her father came to visit her in hers. The expression on his face was downcast yet subdued in the way it always is when he’s to deliver her bad news. All it took was one look at his face for her to slam the book she was reading shut and toss it onto the table in front of the chair she was lounging in. Her hair was disheveled from the braids she took down, and she wore her simplest, most comfortable dress available. She looked, for lack of a better word, a mess.

Daemon stalked across the room to her with his mouth clamped shut, one hand on the hilt of Dark Sister, and knelt down on the carpet in front of her. One of his hands reached for hers, and he held it. Without saying anything for the first moment or so, he held her hand because he knew it was what she needed from either him, her mother, or her brothers now that her temper had been given time to cool down. As soon as he saw her finally begin to take deep, even breaths in and out without fail, he allowed his hand to slip away.

“Iksan vaoreznuni, ñuha dōna riña,” he said in their mother tongue to keep any of her handmaidens from overhearing the private conversation. I am sorry, my sweet girl. “Konīr iksis daorun kostan gaomagon.” There is nothing I can do. “Nyke gōntan daor jaelagon ziry hae sȳrī. Yn konir sagon se vyguēsin hen bisa ābrar. Issa jēda ao gūrēñagon skoros māzigon lēda aōha gaomilaksir hae dārilaros.” I know this is not what you want. I did not want it as well. But that is the nature of this life. It is time you learn what comes with your duty as heir.

She huffed a sigh at him in response, wishing to throw a fit and stomp her feet the way she once did as a spoiled young princess, but she didn’t. What frustrated her the most was the fact that he was right. Everyone else was right—her mother, her father, Viserys—and it killed her. It threatened to eat her alive.

Y/N lamented, “Dārilaros Aemond gaomas daor sesīr hae nyke. Emi daorun isse quptenka, kepa.” Prince Aemond does not even like me. We have nothing in common, father. “Nyke gīmigon nyke gōntan daor emagon iā iderennon, yn naejot gaomagon bisa mijegon nyke iksis nūmāzma.” I know I did not have a choice, but to do this without me is mean.

To this, Daemon chuckled.

“Aōha muña gīmigon ao sȳrī. Lo ēdas eptan ao nūmāzma ziry, ao would emagon geptot va Vermithor.” Your mother knows you well. If she had asked you about it, you would have left on Vermithor. “Iksā aōha kepa’s tala. Iksā iā zaldrīzes. Se mērī ñuhoso naejot gaomagon īles naejot ruaragon ziry hen ao.” You are your father’s daughter. You are a dragon. The only way to do it was to hide it from you.

The last part drew a soft giggle from her as well. It wasn’t as if he was wrong. Had she been briefed on the plan to betroth her to her uncle, she would have marched down to the Dragonpit and mounted Vermithor the first chance she got. No, Rhaenyra was right, this was the only way to ensure the plan’s success on both ends. Had anyone told Aemond, she suspects he would have talked to his mother and allowed her to find a way out of it. Perhaps a highborn woman from another house whose gained alliance would prove too good of an offer for the King to overlook.

Her father quieted for a second, then spoke again quite candidly. For he never thought to prepare his most cherished creation for the reality of her ever-looming duty as a wife until now. Selfishly, he thought he and Rhaenyra may keep her forever. He already lost ten years with her, so why wouldn’t he feel entitled to more? But, he realized, she was a woman grown. Soon, she would no longer be his or Rhaenyra’s, nor would she be Prince Aemond’s. She would be her own. The Seven Kingdoms would one day be hers for the taking.

“Se gaomā daor gīmigon skorkydoso olvie emā isse quptenka lēda zirȳla. Ra arlinnon istin iksā wed. Skori ao glaesagon hae valzȳrys se ābrazȳrys, ao mirre hēnkirī. Lēda biarves, kesā mazverdagon naejot hae aōha valzȳrys. Se, lo ziry ōdrikagon ao, ao gīmigon aōha kepa se muña would nekēbagon hen zȳhon tolie laes. Daor bona ao jorrāelagon īlva. Daor, nyke gīmigon ao se vermithor kessa gaomagon sepār sȳz mērī.” And you do not know how much you have in common with him. Things change once you are wed. When you live as husband and wife, you work together. With luck, you will grow to like your husband. And, if he hurts you, you know your father and mother would carve out his other eye. Not that you need us. No, I know you and Vermithor will do just fine alone.

The thought of things changing between her and Aemond felt impossible, but she decided to take his word for it. What else was she to do? After all, her father had three marriages so far, and she had none. If anyone were an expert in the matter, it would be him, not her.

Truth be told, Prince Aemond was not the worst option in the realm. It could’ve been Aegon, and thank the Gods it was not. For one, she did not find him as attractive as Aemond, and he could not wield a sword to save his own skin, so how could she expect him to protect her as his wife? She and Aemond could take down a group of men with their skill as sword fighters alone, standing back to back as a team. The same cannot be said for her other uncle. Not to mention, Aegon had a well-known reputation for forcing himself on the handmaidens who tended to him and his wife. Aemond, however, had never had such vile rumors spread about him. Outside of his obvious lust for revenge against her brothers, he was decent.

After her father departed, it was time to wash for the day and allow her handmaidens to aid her in preparing for supper. Rather than wearing the dress she sported in the Great Hall earlier that day, she opted for her best. If this was her first dinner with her soon-to-be husband and stepmother, she would do her best to make Rhaenyra proud in one of the dresses she had made for her.

Now, the confidence she built up in the secluded sanctuary of her private chambers has dwindled back down, but she doesn’t allow herself to linger outside of the dining room for any longer than a moment. She takes a deep breath to steady herself, then walks in.

Everyone else, save for King Viserys, is already present at the long table pushed toward the other side of the spacious room she enters. She forces her gaze to meet her parents’ eyes first, then her brothers, Queen Alicent, Helaena, Otto, Aegon, then, finally Aemond. He is positioned at the end of the table with an empty chair beside him that she can only assume is meant for her now that they are promised to one another. Mercifully, she is seated on the side closest to her dear Aunt Helaena, not Otto Hightower. Whether that was intentionally planned by her mother, father, grandsire, or new stepmother, she does not know. If she were to bet on it, it would be on the latter. Queen Alicent may have her issues with Y/N’s parents, but she is well aware of her fondness for Helaena.

Rhaenyra gives her an encouraging smile as she watches her cross the room, no doubt approving of her cheerful demeanor whether it’s feigned or not. When she turns to walk toward the side of the table Aemond sits at, she finds herself breathless yet again beneath the intensity of his stare. His eye moves up and down the length of her body in assessment. It lingers on the upper part of her body where the detailing of her blood-red dress becomes more intricate, then notices the statement necklace passed down to her from her mother that clings around her neck.

The neckline of the dress plunges down as far as she is allowed without compromising her modesty. When facing her dead-on from their seats at the table, it does not appear scandalous at all, but when Aemond stands from his seat to pull hers out as his mother instructed him to, the height advantage he has on her changes that.

She says in greeting, their gazes locked, “My Prince,” and sits down as soon as the words leave her.

And though she cannot see it, Aemond grips the back of her chair hard enough to turn his knuckles white at the sight of her. He can only see the side of her face at the moment, but she looks…beautiful. The same conflicted feeling that came over him in the training yard settles inside of his chest again as he sits down in the chair beside her.

The second they are both settled in their seats, though, the doors open again, and they all must stand to welcome King Viserys. It merely takes a moment for the guards assisting him to carry his chair around the side of the table and place him in between Alicent and Rhaenyra. His wife is quick to interlace her fingers with his and ask him how he’s feeling, to which he responds by saying he is fine despite the wheezing breaths he takes.

After Alicent says a quick prayer, he wastes no time in looking upon his family with a smile on his face.

“This is an occasion for celebration, it seems. My grandsons, Jace and Luc, will marry their cousins, Baela and Rhaena.” He then turns to look where Y/N and Aemond sit side by side, not looking or speaking to one another. “My son, Aemond, will marry my granddaughter, Y/N, further strengthening the bond within our house. A toast to the young princes and their betrothed.”

Everyone raises their cups.

“And,” Viserys continues, “to Prince Jacaerys, the future Lord of the Tides.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Y/N watches Aegon’s face twist up into a smile that she can only assume means trouble. But, before her son can ruin the evening just as it is beginning, Alicent plasters a warm smile on her face and turns toward her son’s betrothed.

“Princess, may I ask that I help you design your wedding gown? I would love to aid you in your preparations for the ceremony, seeing that it is far too much for one woman to handle alone in a week.”

She nearly choked on the mouthful of wine she was in the midst of swallowing when Alicent began speaking. Even Aemond tenses slightly at the short timeframe between now, the day their betrothal was announced, and the wedding. It isn’t as if it doesn’t make sense to her. Viserys’ health declines daily at a horrifying rate, and the sooner they are wed, the sooner they create peace between their families.

He watches her closely, studying her as she nods and says, “Of course, my Queen. It would be an honor.”

The whole time, Aemond remains unnervingly silent. It isn’t unlike him at all, but for the situation at hand, she finds herself wishing he were the type to initiate conversation of some sort so she may begin to get to know him better. They were friends when they were children, sure, but much has changed in the years that have passed since they last saw one another at Driftmark, and they are not the children they once were.

“I must admit,” Viserys speaks from beside his wife, “It pleases me so to know that I will be able to witness my youngest child’s wedding. My only hope for you both is that you remain happy together, and that you may have a marriage as fulfilling as mine own.”

For the first time since she arrived, her betrothed speaks.

“I am happy to hear that I’ve pleased you, father.”

The night continues on with little issue from then on. Surprisingly, their mothers do not break into an argument from either side of King Viserys, and, save for a few comments from Aegon here or there that cause her brothers to stiffen with stifled anger, everyone gets along rather well. She and Aemond do not speak to each other as she hoped they would, but he is not cruel or perverted like his brother had it been him she was betrothed to.

In fact, when she looks across the table to see her mother and father talking and laughing with each other, to see her brothers talking with their soon-to-be wives, she cannot help but feel happy to be here. It was the last thing she expected to feel when she spoke to her parents earlier, but she welcomes it. Although it has Aegon scowling into his cup of wine, Jacaerys and Helaena dance together in front of the table with wide smiles, spinning around one another and jumping as though they’re still the children who used to play together.

For a brief moment, everything is perfect. Viserys is glad to see his family together in celebration of his grandchildren’s marriages, Rhaenyra and Alicent are being civil toward one another, and, she decides, Aemond isn’t too bad. Granted, he is hardly speaking to her or anyone else for most of the dinner, but that matters not to her. He’ll warm up to her eventually, she hopes.

Her hope is scattered to the wind the second she sees a servant set down the roast pig in front of Aemond’s place at the table. At first, all he does is turn his head slowly to look at where Lucerys sits further down the table. Her heart begins to hammer in her chest at the threat present in his body language and facial expression. Silently, she prays neither of them does anything to ruin the peace that has fallen over their family tonight, but when Lucerys begins to chuckle to himself at the memory of the time he, Jacaerys, and Aegon pranked him by gifting him a pig, all bets are off.

The table rattles from the hand Aemond slaps down against it, causing everyone sitting before it to either jolt in surprise or look up from their plates to watch him rising to stand.

Under her breath, Y/N murmurs, “Aemond…” but he pays her no heed.

His cup is clenched in one fist that raises to present it to the room.

“Final tribute,” he casts a quick glance at her. “To my betrothed.” He then sets his sights on her younger brother and glares at him with every bit of ire he’s kept trapped beneath the surface since they last saw each other. “And her brothers. Jace. Luc. Joffrey. Each of them handsome, wise…” There’s a heavy pause. Tension floods the room in the time he takes to consider his words, his eye refusing to stray from where her brother is sitting at the end of the table. “Strong.”

“Aemond,” his mother is quick to say.

Without thinking, Y/N reverts to the child she was when she, her cousins, and her brothers fought him over his claiming of Vhagar and reaches to pinch him on the leg in warning. It’s hidden beneath the surface of the table where their parents cannot catch notice of it, so when she does it, he is the only one who reacts. Even then, it isn’t much of a reaction. All he does is clench his jaw in annoyance. As though she’s a fly buzzing around his face that he wishes to swat away.

“Come, let us drain our cups to these three Strong boys—“

Jacaerys marches forward a step and says, his voice unwavering in its command, “I dare you to say that again.”

From where she sits, she can see the corner of Aemond’s mouth twitch with the urge to smirk. That bait has been taken.

“Why? T’was only a compliment.” At this, her brother begins to walk across the room to him, and her Prince takes that as his chance to turn to him. “Do you not think yourself strong?”

The sound of her brother’s fist meeting his face is soft, only heard by her and Otto as they are the closest over everyone else’s sounds of shock. Aemond takes the hit without wobbling where he stands, not even a little, and he turns back to see Jacaerys with a feral grin on his face. All it takes is a shove against his chest and her brother is sent tumbling into his back on the floor. Her mother shouts his name in disappointment at his violence, but neither of them listens.

Chaos has broken out amongst the family for the second time today, and Y/N doesn’t know what to do other than reach out to grab onto his arm.

“Do not touch him,” she hisses, looking up at Aemond from beneath her furrowed brows.

A muscle in his jaw jumps with him clenching it tightly in restraint, looking down not at her but at the bare hand wrapped around his. She holds onto him as though he is her lifeline, and he cannot help but look back over his shoulder at her brother as he breaks free from the guards restraining him to attack again. On instinct, Aemond rips his hand from her forceful grip with little struggle and moves forward to meet him halfway, damning whatever consequences it may have with her.

Just when the two men are about to reach one another with the promise of violence visible on their faces, they are stopped.

Daemon walks between them and forces his stepson to retreat back to where the guards are standing in a row behind him. All it takes is him holding up a hand, telling everyone else to back off, before he spins back around to face Aemond. His hand rests on the hilt of Dark Sister as a silent threat in time with the heavy sigh that sinks his shoulders.

Her father looks at him the way he used to look at her when she would talk back to him as a child. It must infuriate Aemond to be looked at like a petulant child in need of scolding, but he does not say anything. He simply walks off in the direction of the doors.

Y/N pushes her chair out behind her without a care for how Rhaenyra and Alicent call after her to stay, storming out after Aemond with no small amount of anger swirling within her.

The doors open and slam shut behind her as she rushes to catch up with him halfway down the long hallway with a few servants walking in either direction. His hair swishes from side to side with every harsh step, and she longs for nothing more than to wrap it around her fist and yank on it to gain his attention for what he said to her brothers tonight.

She raises her voice at him, “Keligon!” Stop.

Instead of listening, he continues to walk away from her, and she cannot stop herself from grabbing him by the arm to turn him around to face her. Their difference in strength prevents her from moving him, but she does manage to halt him, and that is not an opportunity she ignores.

“Ēdā daor paktot naejot gaomagon bona! Lucerys iksis iā ābrītsos valītsos, iksā vala. Gaomagon daor iderēbagon va zirȳla syt ra kostas daor dohaeragon!” You had no right to do that! Lucerys is a young boy, you are a man. Do not pick on him for things he cannot help!

Aemond whirls around, invading her space with a hand grasping onto her wrist to yank her hand from his forearm. There’s a crazed look in his eye, and he does not care that the servants at the end of the hall are watching despite not being able to understand their language anyway. Let them talk.

“Ēdan daor paktot? Mazēdas ñuha laes! Lo kostan glaesagon mijegon ñuha laes, kostas gryves issare brōztagon iā nādrēsy!” I had no right? He took my eye! If I can live without my eye, he can bear being called a bastard.

Her face scrunches with rage, brows furrowing, and she plants her free hand on his chest to shove him back only to be seized with both of his hands on her shoulders.

“Vestā aōla bona iā laes iksis iā litse odre syt iā zaldrīzes. Lo ao konir sagon drēje, skoro syt ēdruta ao ōregon bisa toliot zȳhon bartos? kesan aderī sagon aōha ābrazȳrys. Aōha ābrazȳrys! Istia daor ōdrikagon ñuha lēkia.” You said yourself that an eye is a fair price for a dragon. If that is true, why must you hold this over his head? I will soon be your wife. Your wife! You must not harm my brother.

The sparks between them flare up into a wildfire incapable of being contained. Two dragons face off in a fight neither of them will back down from, readying themselves to cause one another harm at a second’s notice. She can feel the heat of his rapid exhales puffing against her face as they are locked in an intense stare, and his hands squeeze her shoulders hard enough to leave bruises behind on her delicate skin.

Aemond says, “Lo iksā naejot sagon ñuha ābrazȳrys, skoro syt ēdruta ao mīsagon lī qilōni ōdrikagon nyke? Lo daor syt Lucerys, aōha valzȳrys would daor jurnegon bisa ñuhoso.” If you are to be my wife, why must you defend those who hurt me? If not for Lucerys, your husband would not look this way.

“Nyke hae se ñuhoso ao jurnegon! laes iā daor, iksā iā gevie vala! Kostilus bisa kostagon emagon issare vestās ondoso sir lo ao jenitis naejot ȳdragon naejot nyke tubī!” I like the way you look! Eye or no, you are a beautiful man. Perhaps this may have been said by now if you bothered to speak to me today. “Nyke shifang bona ziry pryjatan ao, yn ao brōztagon zirȳ nādrēsy ēlī.” I understand that he struck you, but you called them bastards first.

“Issi nādrēsy!” They are bastards!

She rips herself out of his clutches and reaches up to grab him by the chin, forcing him to meet her gaze and listen to what she says next.

“Ñuha muña se kepa sia daor wed skori īlen vēttan, se kesīr iksan. Aōha ābrazȳrys. Gaomas bona jenigon ao? Kessa bisa gaomagon ao hen issare lēda nyke? Kessa ziry jenigon ao naejot qogralbar aōha nādrēsy ābrazȳrys?” My mother and father were not wed when I was made, and here I am. Your wife. Does that bother you? Will this keep you from being with me? Will it bother you to fuck your bastard wife?

This seems to stop him for an instant. It causes his eye to turn wide and his nostrils to flare with the strange mixture of anger and attraction he feels for her at this moment, and he is too stuck on what she said to care or notice that she is still holding his chin. Although he loathes her brothers, he cannot deny the effect she has on him. Every potential match his mother has introduced to him has been a simpering, bashful high-born lady who assumes that their skill in needlepoint or singing will woo him. None of them presented him with a challenge. They all gave way under the slightest bit of pressure, but she doesn’t. She never has.

The sweet scent of the bathing oil she used while soaking in the tub in her chambers clings to her half-up, half-down braided updo. It takes everything he has to not reach up to run it through his fingers. He isn’t sure why the urge comes to mind, but as soon as he notices the citrus scent, he has to pull his chin out of her hand and put a distance between them to keep himself at bay.

He shakes his head at her.

“Emā iā vaogenka relgos syt iā riña.” You have a dirty mouth for a lady.

She counters back without missing a beat, “Iksā olvie nūmāzma syt iā dārilaros.” You are quite mean for a prince.

Aemond steps back again, allowing his eye to roam up and down her figure in a lingering, selfish stare. The neckline of her dress allows him a generous glimpse at her breasts, pressed up against the fabric in a way that begs him to tear it off of her. What she failed to realize when he ignored her throughout their family dinner was that he could not say the things he wished to in the presence of her parents and brothers.

All he offers in response is a, “Hmm,” and turns on his heels to walk off down the hallway without her.

For the next three days, she does not see Prince Aemond, but it isn’t his fault. If anything, it is hers.

She refused to leave her chambers for the entire first day following their betrothal. The events of the day prior had been chaotic enough to provide her excitement for the week, so she resigned herself to a day of solitude her mother allowed due to the whirlwind of drama from their family dinner. If not for her marriage to Aemond being planned, her family likely would have left to return to Dragonstone after the fight broke out between her brothers and her betrothed, but Rhaenyra was quick to reassure her that they were not going anywhere.

The comfort of her mother’s warm hand stroking her back as she hugged her to her chest, pressing the swell of her pregnant belly into her abdomen, soothed the nerves that plagued her in anticipation of the wedding.

“Your betrothal does not mean we are abandoning you, my love. I promise to stay here by your side until you become accustomed to living in King's Landing again.”

They talked and spent time together that first day, just the two of them, until the sun faded below the edge of the horizon. The topic of conversation varied between gossiping about what happened at the family dinner and Rhaenyra answering her myriad of questions about marriage. No one sent for them or dared to disrupt the sanctuary created within the walls of her room. It wasn’t until her brothers and Daemon came knocking that they were forced to come back to reality.

The second day, she read two modestly-sized books, walked to her brother Jacaerys’ chambers to pass the time with a quick conversation, and wasted at least thirty minutes soaking in the tub until the water went cold. Other than that, there wasn’t much she could do to quell her boredom without leaving her rooms.

On the third day, her father forced her out of bed and dragged her down to the Dragonpit, insisting that a ride on Vermithor would lift her spirits. And it did. She thanked Daemon the minute she landed back in the dragon pit where he waited for her, stranded without his beloved Caraxes there for him to fly. All he did was throw an arm around her shoulder and tell her they would practice in the training yard next. This set her on edge at first, wondering if she would run into Aemond for the first time since he left her in the hallway, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he too was sulking and isolating himself in his chambers.

Today, she finally tired of hiding herself away with nothing to occupy her and made her way to the Godswood with her favorite book from the library tucked under her arm.

Y/N sits beneath the Weirwood tree, back pressed up against the thick trunk and book flipped open to rest on her thighs. It has been at least an hour since she arrived if the position of the sun in the sky changing where the shadows of the leaves fall has anything to say for it, and she has yet to look up from her story. The warm breeze blows at her face to keep her from feeling too warm in the arid summer. It has not rained in a moon, and every blade of grass beneath her as she walked up to her favorite tree was brittle from nature’s neglect.

Distantly, she hears the soft footfalls of someone crossing the same brittle grass she had to reach the tree, but she doesn’t lift her gaze from the book to greet them. It is most Queen Alicent’s most trusted lady in waiting coming to fetch her for wedding preparations. Either that or it’s Lucerys coming back to bug her as he had earlier because he was bored.

The last thing she expected was to hear Aemond’s voice.

All he says is, “Hello, niece.”

When she lifts her eyes from the pages of her book to see him, the sun halos him from behind, turning the edges of his silver hair warm from its marigold rays, and before she can stop herself, a slight smile finds its way to her lips. She hadn’t been lying the other night when they argued in the hallway. She does find him handsome, and there are fond memories from her childhood with him far different from those which he shares with her brothers. There was never any cruelty between them. He enjoyed that she was learning to wield a sword and often asked her to practice with him before the drama of their family pulled them apart.

Before she can get a word in, he’s extending his arm to present a small, green velvet box to her. By the looks of it alone, she deduces that it is jewelry of some sort, but she won’t know what exactly it is until she opens it.

“What’s this for?” she asks and takes the box into her possession.

It sits, cradled in her lap on top of the book, until she pushes the lid open. A necklace. Gold with modest rubies set along the chain until a slightly larger one, set in the mouth of a roaring dragon, hangs from the center of it. In truth, it is stunning. She has never owned nor seen a piece of jewelry like it in her mother’s collection, and it’s hard to refrain from asking him to put it on her straight away.

“My mother told me I must court you,” he says, voice even and comically unexpressive. “I’d like to see you wear it for our wedding ceremony.” Then, having heard of her desire for a traditional Valyrian ceremony through Queen Alicent, he clarifies, “The public one.”

She looks up at him again.

“This is what you call courting, my Prince?”

Of course, the gift is better than what any other potential suitor could have given her, but, for the sake of torturing him, she couldn’t resist the urge to say it. Marrying a man who cannot be bothered to spend time with her or engage in conversation with her is not in her plans. If she is to become his wife, he’ll need to work for it, and as pretty as the necklace may be, she’d prefer actually getting to know him over a gift.

Aemond tilts his head to the side as though in curiosity.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. What else would you like me to do, Princess?”

Without further ado, the velvet jewelry box is shut and placed on the ground to the left side of her. The book remains flipped open on her lap to the page she was last reading from, and she glanced up and down between it and him.

“Well, you could ask me what I’m reading first,” she suggests. “I know we were friends as children, but it has been many years since then. All I’m asking is to know my husband before we’re wed. To do so, we would have to actually talk to one another for a change.”

There’s a stretch of silence following this.

All she hears is the breeze ruffling through the leaves of the treetop above and the sound of distant conversation between servants as they stare at each other. He narrows his eye at her, then smiles to himself and closes the distance between them with two long strides. The thick roots of the tree serve as seats for them to lounge upon, and he takes the one emerging from the ground right beside her as his seat of choice. It looks a little funny from her perspective to see him awkwardly perched on the room of the great tree with his arms braced on his knees and his focus solely set on her.

“What are you reading?” Aemond then asks.

She closes the large book with a soft “thump” sound and leans back against the trunk with her head tilted back just so to allow her to look up at him.

“I found it the last time I was here. In the library. Septa Marlow ripped it from my hands before I could read a single word, so, of course, I snuck back in later to see what all the fuss was for.” He fights the urge to smile at that. Her fingers, decorated in rings passed down to her from her mother, curl around the edges of the book and raise it to present it to Aemond as though it is a prize as sought after as the Iron Throne. “A Caution for Young Girls. The story of Lady Coryanne Wylde. After discovering its contents, I soon understood why the septa tried to keep it from me. It was far too scandalous for a young maiden such as myself to read.”

A scoff comes from the Prince as he takes it into his possession and flips it over in his hands to inspect it.

“I have only ever heard of it. I prefer history and philosophy.”

She perks up at the opportunity to gush about her favorite book to someone.

“It’s about her erotic adventures before becoming a septa in Oldtown later in her life. It’s quite entertaining. I rather enjoy reading books separate from my studies. It’s like entering a different world or living a different life.”

Under his breath, she can hear him mutter, “Erotic adventures,” incredulously to himself as though it is the most ridiculous topic for a book he has ever heard, and it earns a snorting laugh from her.

“What? Your brother can frequent brothels on the Street of Silk as much as he’d like yet I cannot read about it in place of having the freedoms only given to men in this world?”

The wind blows strands of his hair out of place enough for her to reach up and tuck it back where it belongs without thinking. Her sudden movement almost caused him to jerk away in blind anticipation of having to react physically before he forces himself to remain still. After a second, his body begins to relax at the feeling of his fingers running through his hair and pushing it back into place where it previously laid. When her hand comes back to rest in her lap, he manages to find his voice.

“You will not have to read about it for much longer, though, will you?”

Suddenly, the eye contact they maintain becomes unbearable for the both of them. Y/N stops herself from shifting in place in discomfort due to the strange feeling between her thighs at the implication of his words, and Aemond cannot ignore the thrill it gives him to see the effect he has on her.

Perhaps this marriage will be easier than she previously thought.

Let me know your thoughts! Part Two with the wedding, smut, and drama will be written shortly.

Taglist: @mvrylee

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen smut #aemond targaryen x reader #house of the dragon #fanfiction

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