Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first thing you remember is the sound of screaming metal.

Not the impact, not the ground, not the end. Just ... the sound.

It began as a tremor beneath your feet, a vibration that didn't belong to normal turbulence. You had flown dozens of times before; you knew the rhythm of harmless shaking, the soft dips that made stomachs lurch and strangers grip armrests. This was different, and vert wrong.

You had been half-asleep when it started. The cabin lights were dimmed to an artificial twilight. A thin blanket lay over your lap. The old person beside you had their headphones on, head tilted against the window. You remember thinking how tired you were. How, when you landed, you would call your mother. How you still hadn't answered your friend's message. How you had work waiting, responsibilities... a life.

Then the plane dropped.

Not a gentle dip, not the familiar sway of turbulence that earns nervous laughter and tight smiles.

A violent, stomach-flipping plunge that ripped a scream from the cabin, and one from you before you could stop it. Your body jerked forward against the seatbelt, your fingers instinctively clutching the back of the seat in front of you. Your hair fell into your eyes, your vision blurring as gravity seemed to lose its mind.

The overhead bins rattled like bones in a coffin. And then the oxygen masks fell.

They dropped from the ceiling with a series of mechanical pops, swinging wildly as the plane shuddered again. Training took over before thought could. You grabbed the nearest mask and pulled it down hard, securing it over your nose and mouth with shaking hands. The elastic dug painfully into your hair.

Beside you, the elderly woman fumbled with hers, her fingers trembling too violently to position it properly. Her eyes were wide : terrified and confused. You reached across, forcing your own panic down long enough to guide the mask over her face, tightening the band behind her head.

"Breathe," you told her, though you weren't sure if you were speaking to her or yourself.

Then you grabbed the seat in front of you again and bowed your head.

You began praying. To God, to science, to luck, to anything that might be listening.

Please let this pass. Please let us land.

The seatbelt sign chimed again, shrill and absurdly polite in the middle of chaos... And then came the screaming metal.

Louder than before, closer, like a tearing and shrieking roar that vibrated through the fuselage as though something massive had raked claws along the length of the aircraft. The sound burrowed into your bones. The wings groaned in protest, the entire cabin tilted sharply to one side, sending a fresh wave of screams crashing through the air.

A bag burst from an overhead compartment and slammed into the aisle. Another followed. Luggage rained down somewhere behind you. A child wailed for their mother, someone shouted a name over and over again as if repetition could anchor reality.

The baby a few rows back stopped crying for a moment, and then screamed even louder. Not the ordinary cry of discomfort, no, a high, panicked, animal sound that didn't belong to an infant.

Someone began praying loudly, voice breaking on every word. Someone else sobbed uncontrollably. A man across the aisle tried to stand and was immediately thrown back into his seat as the plane lurched again.

This is hell, you thought distantly. This cannot be real.

You remembered reading once that only one in millions of flights ended in disaster. Statistically impossible and astronomically rare.

So why yours? Why this one? Why now?

The plane shuddered again (more violently this time) so hard your teeth snapped together.

The shriek of metal rose into something unbearable, no longer a distant groan but a tortured scream that seemed to come from every direction at once. It sounded as if the aircraft itself were being ripped apart midair, its bones splintering under invisible strain. The floor trembled beneath your shoes, vibrating up through your legs, into your spine. The cabin lights flickered.

A cold draft swept through the cabin, unnatural and biting, raising goosebumps along your arms despite the heat of panic.

The woman beside you would not stop screaming. It broke and rose and broke again, high and frantic, right against your ear. Her hands were locked around the armrests so tightly her knuckles had gone white beneath the cabin lights. She kept repeating the same word over and over, though you couldn't tell if it was a name or a prayer.

The sound drilled into your skull, but you couldn't blame her. Across the aisle, someone was hyperventilating.

Then you saw her : the hostess (who had been smiling barely minutes ago as she collected plastic cups and asked if anyone wanted coffee) stumbled into the aisle again. The plane lurched forward so abruptly she lost her footing entirely and was thrown against the armrests. She hit hard, scrambling to steady herself as another violent jolt rocked the cabin.

Blood trickled down from her hairline, slicing a thin red path along her temple.

It was only then that you felt the warmth on your own brow.

You lifted your fingers shakily and touched just above your eyebrow. They came away smeared with red. You must have struck your head against the seat in front of you when the plane first dropped. You hadn't even felt it, adrenaline had swallowed the pain whole.

You remember her face clearly : blonde hair pulled into a tight, immaculate bun that was now half-fallen loose, strands sticking to her cheek with blood. Her makeup was smudged. Her composure cracked but not gone.

"Please remain seated!" she shouted, her voice straining as she gripped the backs of seats to keep from being thrown again. "Keep your seatbelts fastened!"

The plane bucked again, and she nearly fell a second time.

The overhead speakers crackled to life, the pilot's voice came through distorted, too fast, too tight. You caught fragments.

"...unexpected system failure..."

"...attempting emergency descent..."

"...please remain calm..."

Remain calm.

The plane lurched again, harder this time. A suitcase struck the ceiling and burst open mid-air, clothes scattering like frightened birds. Someone slammed into the aisle. The hostess lost her footing and hit the floor, scrambling back up as the cabin angled sickeningly downward.

You remember thinking, absurdly: This isn't how I die.

No, you weren't ready. You hadn't finished anything, you hadn't said goodbye properly to anyone, your phone was in airplane mode, your last message to your sister unsent.

You thought of your mother's laugh, of your father's pride, of your friends teasing you about overworking. Of the way the city lights looked at night from your apartment window. Of the life you had built, painstaking and imperfect and entirely yours.

And then another sound split the air — louder than the first and second. A final rupture. A violent crack like the sky itself breaking.

The plane shook so violently your teeth snapped together. The hostess screamed now, not composed or trained.

You could barely see through the blur of panic and tears. People were crying, praying, shouting names into the chaos as if their loved ones could somehow hear them through metal and cloud.

The pilot's voice again, barely audible over the roar.

"...brace — brace — brace — "

You tightened your seatbelt. Your knuckles went white around the armrests.

You remember thinking, with strange clarity: Of course. Of course it would be something like this. Of course I would be this unlucky.

You had survived exams that nearly broke you, sleepless nights in residency, survived heartbreak, failures and stupid break-ups... And now this.

The plane tilted nose-down.

The world outside the window was only cloud and blinding white.

Someone grabbed your hand. A stranger, surely. You never saw their face clearly. You squeezed back without thinking.

And then : Impact.

Not the clean finality movies promise, not the soft fade to black or the surrender of consciousness. There was nothing merciful about it.

It was violent in a way your mind still struggles to shape into memory. Bone-rattling. Organ-shaking. A catastrophic detonation of sound and force as the aircraft finally tore itself open.

You felt it before you understood it : a rupture.

A splitting crack so loud it didn't register as noise at first — only as pressure. The cabin walls buckled with a metallic scream that rose higher and higher until it stopped sounding like metal at all and became something almost alive. Something dying.

Then the plane opened.

The fuselage peeled back with a thunderous, ripping roar. Freezing air exploded inward, slamming into you like a physical blow. The pressure shift crushed your ears, the oxygen mask was torn sideways across your face. Papers, bags, plastic trays, clothing (everything not bolted down) erupted into a cyclone.

Seats wrenched free from their anchors.

You saw it happen.

You saw the row ahead of you twist at an unnatural angle. You saw bolts shear, you saw metal give way. A section of the cabin simply... disappeared, leaving a jagged mouth open to the sky.

And through that opening : People.

You saw them dragged toward it as though gravity had changed its allegiance. Hands clawed at armrests, fingernails scraped against metal. A man across the aisle reached for his daughter and missed by inches. A flight attendant vanished mid-step, her scream ripped from her throat and flung into the roaring void before it could fully form.

Their cries were not human anymore, they were torn apart by wind before they could reach your ears whole.

The sky outside was not gentle blue. It was vast and merciless and blinding.

A woman two rows ahead was ripped from her seat entirely, her hair streaming behind her like a banner as she disappeared through the fractured hull. Her scream cut off so abruptly it felt like someone had switched off the world.

Then the old woman beside you was taken.

One moment she was there : fingers digging into the armrests, eyes wide behind the plastic of the oxygen mask you had secured for her.

The next, the wind claimed her.

The decompression tore her sideways with terrifying force. Her frail body slammed against the jagged edge of torn metal where the fuselage had split open. You heard the sickening crack as her head struck steel and then the gale swallowed her entirely, dragging her into the open sky before you could even reach for her.

Her seatbelt had failed... or snapped... or simply hadn't been enough.

She was gone. Vanished into blue and white and screaming air.

Your mind refused to process it.

It rejected the image outright, like a corrupted file it could not open. There was no space in you for the reality of what you had just witnessed. No room for grief or horror. Only blank, stunned disbelief as your brain struggled to protect you from the impossible truth: You're watching people die in front of you, soon, you'll be next. This isn't happening. This cannot be happening.

But it was.

The force inside the cabin became unbearable. Air howled past your ears so violently you couldn't hear yourself think. The cold was immediate and savage, biting through your clothes, through your skin, straight into your bones.

Your shoulder slammed hard against the armrest as something heavy (maybe luggage? maybe part of the overhead panel?) struck you from the side. Pain burst down your arm. Your head snapped forward and collided with the seat in front of you. You tasted blood instantly, metallic and warm against your tongue.

You forced your eyes shut, you couldn't watch another person be swallowed by the sky.

The aircraft twisted again — harder this time. The floor tilted at an impossible angle. Your body lifted against the restraints of your seatbelt, straining forward as if the plane were trying to fling you out with the rest of its insides.

The noise became everything, metal tearing, wind screaming, people praying, you screaming, children crying, structural beams snapping like bones.

It felt as though the plane itself was being peeled apart layer by layer, like a tin can crushed in a giant's fist.

Something slammed into your shoulder again — hard enough to steal your breath. Another impact glanced off the side of your head. White light burst behind your eyelids, brilliant and blinding. Your vision fractured into shards of brightness even with your eyes closed.

For one split second, time stretched.

You thought of your mother again, of your father standing in the kitchen doorway, of your best friend laughing at something stupid you said last week, of your siblings and their stupid antics, of the unfinished emails on your laptop, of how statistically impossible this was.

One in millions.

And yet : you.

Of course it would be you, the plane lurched into what felt like a final, catastrophic roll.

Your stomach flipped, your ribs screamed, and your skull rang.

And then the white consumed everything, not darkness, not peace, no, just an all-devouring, obliterating white.

And then — silence. Not even wind, not even fire.

Just silence.

You wake with a violent, choking gasp, as though you have just been pulled up from deep water. Air floods into your lungs too quickly, and your throat burns the instant it expands. You cough hard, the sound scraping out of you, and roll onto your side, clutching at the ground beneath you as if the earth itself might shift again.

It doesn't.

The soil is cool and damp under your palms. Real and solid. Packed with roots and fallen leaves that press into your skin. You inhale again, slower this time, and the air tastes nothing like smoke or jet fuel or burned plastic. It smells green, wet, and of course ... alive.

Your eyes snap open fully, you expect chaos.

You expect twisted metal impaled into the earth at impossible angles, smoke rising in thick black columns against the sky. You expect fire. You expect the distant crackle of burning debris, the hiss of ruptured fuel lines, the groan of wreckage settling into ruin. You expect screams — injured passengers crying for help, someone calling a name over and over again.

There is none of it.

You push yourself up onto your elbows, your entire body trembling with adrenaline that hasn't yet understood it no longer has anything to fight. Your vision blurs for a moment before sharpening, and what you see makes no sense at all.

You are in a forest.

Not at the edge of one. Not near a clearing gouged into the earth by impact, not beside shattered wings lodged between tree trunks.

You are in the middle of it.

Tall trees surround you in every direction, their trunks thick and ancient, bark ridged and moss-covered. Sunlight filters down through a dense canopy of leaves, scattering in soft green shafts that move gently with the breeze. Birds flit between branches overhead, chirping as though the world is undisturbed. Insects hum somewhere in the underbrush.

You turn your head to the left, then to the right, your pulse beginning to pound harder.

No smoke, no debris, no smell of burning.

What the actual fuck ?

Your mind scrambles for something reasonable to hold onto. Perhaps you were thrown clear? Perhaps the plane crashed miles away and you were flung by force farther than seems possible? Maybe the wreckage is beyond the trees? Maybe you landed on softer ground. Maybe —

You force yourself to your feet, swaying immediately as dizziness sweeps through you. Your ribs ache when you straighten, you let out a deep groan, bruised pain that makes breathing uncomfortable. Your shoulder throbs where something struck it. There is a heavy pulse at the back of your skull, and when you raise trembling fingers to your brow, they brush against dried blood crusted along your hairline.

You turn in a slow circle.

If there had been a crash, the forest would not look like this.

There would be a path carved through trees, splintered trunks. A scar across the earth where the fuselage tore forward. There would be luggage scattered between roots, torn seats, shredded fabric caught on branches. Something.

There is nothing.

No torn seats scattered across a field, no broken windows glinting in the dirt. No black box half-buried in soil. No burning wing lodged against bark. No emergency slide tangled among the trees. No bodies lying still and terrible in the grass.

Not even a distant sound.

The silence is wrong. So, so wrong.

You step forward carefully, scanning the ground as if something might materialize if you look hard enough. The leaves are undisturbed except for where you must have fallen, the earth bears no sign of violent impact. No gouge, no crater, not even a trail of destruction.

It is as though the sky never tore open.

As though the plane never existed.

Your breathing grows uneven again, though this time it isn't from smoke or altitude. It is from the creeping, suffocating realization that there is no logical explanation for what you are seeing.

Even if you had been thrown clear of the wreckage, even if by some impossible miracle you were the only survivor, there would be proof. Physics would demand it.

Instead, the forest stands whole and indifferent around you, untouched by catastrophe.

You open your mouth and call out, your voice raw from earlier screams. "Hello?!"

The word travels through the trees and fades without resistance.

You wait, but nothing answers.

You try again, louder now, desperation creeping into your voice despite your attempt to control it.

"Is anyone there?!"

Only birds take flight from a nearby branch, startled into brief motion before settling again.

No engines in the distance, no sirens, no shouts of other survivors.

Just wind sliding softly through leaves.

Your heart begins to race in a different way now — not from imminent death, but from the unbearable impossibility of survival without context. You are standing in a place that does not match the disaster you remember.

"Help!" your sore throat rasps again, cracking under the strain. "Please... somebody help me!"

It comes out as more of a sob than a shout now, ragged and desperate, and still there is nothing — only the distant rustle of leaves and the occasional chirp of birds. Your voice barely carries; it feels swallowed by the air itself, broken by fear and exhaustion.

Your eyes sting, blurry from the tears and sweat, and you have to blink several times before you can even recognize the forest around you. Your ears ring, your ribs ache sharply with each breath.

With great effort, you push yourself up on shaking arms. Your palms scrape along rough bark and damp earth, the sting biting into your skin. Your clothes are torn, fabric shredded in places from the crash or the fall. You touch your hair and find dried blood crusted along your hairline and temple. A deep, pounding ache throbs behind your right ear.

Your shoulder hurts, you glance down and see it : blood has soaked through your thin, now-ruined jacket. A shard of wood protrudes from the flesh, jagged and cruel. Your fingers hover above it, trembling. Your mind (your trained, rational, doctor's mind) knows not to touch it. Any interference now could risk infection, make it worse. So you hold back, unable to do anything but watch it, wishing you had antiseptic, wishing you had scissors, wishing you weren't alone.

Even so, your instinct drives you forward. You force your voice out again, hoarse and raw, dragging it from deep in your chest. "Help... please... anyone!"

It burns. Every syllable scorches your throat as it catches on cracked vocal cords. You bite your lip to hold back tears, but they slide anyway. The damp earth under your knees makes it worse, cold and gritty, mixing with blood and sweat.

No answer comes.

Nothing but the forest. The too-green, too-alive forest.

You are utterly, and impossibly alone.

One step after another, you force yourself to move.

Part of your mind keeps whispering, maybe help is on the way, maybe someone is coming for you, but you know it's a lie your fear wants you to cling to. You can't wait, you have to keep going, hoping that if you stumble through the trees long enough, maybe you'll find someone, anyone, alive.

But no one comes.

Hours pass, though time feels fractured. The sun sinks low, bleeding red behind the branches, and when you finally emerge from the forest, night has already claimed the sky. Your legs are raw and trembling. Hunger gnaws at your stomach until it feels hollow. Your throat is raw from screaming and thirst, each swallow a burning reminder of how little you've had to sustain yourself.

You don't even know how you survived — after the crash, the terror, the running, the empty hours with nothing but your own ragged breaths. Maybe you drank from a lake along the way. Maybe you didn't. Your body doesn't care or remember. It just wants to survive.

And then, as the forest finally thins, there it is.

A village.

Thatched roofs, crooked and low, their beams dark with smoke curling lazily into the evening sky. Mud streets winding between timber-framed houses. Chimneys spewing pale tendrils of smoke. Men in rough wool tunics and patched leather boots, women in coarse linen dresses and aprons, children barefoot and darting through the dirt, laughing or crying or both.

You stop dead, your pulse spikes.

Where the fuck are you?

Where are the roads, the cars, the electricity lines, the streetlights, the convenience stores? The reality of it presses in on you like a hand around your throat.

For a brief, ridiculous second, you think maybe it's a reenactment. A film set, a medieval festival somewhere. Or a commune — maybe some strange, isolated community living like it's centuries ago. You pin the idea to the thin hope that your mind is just trying to explain this insane impossibility.

But then you step closer.

You enter the village proper, the mud streets narrowing underfoot, the smell of woodsmoke and cooking fire heavy in your nose. And immediately, people begin to look at you.

The stares are piercing, curious, judging and ... appraising.

Your modern clothes mark you instantly as out of place. Your torn jacket, your sweatshirt, your jeans — everything is wrong. Women glance at you as though they've never seen anything like you, their aprons and veils standing in stark contrast to your foreign appearance. Men eye you from head to toe, arms crossing instinctively over their chests, sizing you up with suspicion and barely disguised interest.

You pull your jacket tighter around yourself, wincing as the weight of it presses against your shoulder wound. The ache pulses sharply, reminding you of every step you've taken, every scrape, every cut you've tried to ignore.

Ignoring the stares that prickled at the back of your neck, you gather what courage you have left and reach out to stop an old man as he shuffles past, his gait slow and uneven. You catch his arm gently, careful not to startle him.

"Excuse me... sir," you say, your voice trembling despite your effort to sound firm. "Where... where are we?"

He freezes for a moment, his one good eye narrowing as he looks you over. The other socket is empty, a smooth scar where the eye should have been, giving his face a peculiar, lopsided gravity. His brows knit together, forming deep creases across his forehead, and his mouth hangs slightly open, revealing teeth that are mostly gone or worn to yellow stubs.

The smell hits you before his words do : a heavy, sour scent of sweat, smoke, and unwashed cloth that makes your stomach churn. Despite this, you hold his gaze, trying to convey that you mean no harm, that you are... simply lost.

He tilts his head, studying you in silence, his one good eye tracking every movement, every tremble in your posture. The noises of the village fade into a dull hum behind you, the clatter of boots on mud and the low murmur of voices retreating from your awareness.

"Ashford Meadow," he says gruffly.

"Where... where is this?" you ask, confusion twisting your tongue. The syllables feel foreign, awkward, even to your own ears, but you need answers.

"The Reach," he replies, before adjusting the heavy pack on his back and continuing on his way.

You swallow hard, your throat raw, and glance around nervously. A few men whistle at you, their eyes lingering a little too long, but you ignore them, focusing on keeping your balance and your wits. Is this some kind of movie set? you wonder again, though the faces staring back at you (their expressions curious, wary, almost skeptical) tell a different story. You must look like a mess: dried blood in your hair, your clothes torn and muddied, your walk unsteady.

Your gaze sweeps the village quickly, searching for something familiar, something that can anchor you. And then you see it: a tavern. Its wooden sign creaks slightly in the wind, and smoke curls lazily from the chimney. The doors are open, and warm, amber light spills into the street, cutting through the cool, green gloom of the evening.

You stumble toward it, hope sparking faintly in your chest, even as every step aches, your shoulder burning and ribs throbbing. Maybe inside, you can find someone who can explain where you are, and perhaps, just perhaps, what has happened to the world you thought you knew.

You step further into the tavern, the warmth and smell of smoke and roasting meat washing over you in a strange relief. Your legs ache with every step, your shoulder throbs, and the dried blood in your hair makes your skin crawl, but the human presence, any presence, draws you forward. You reach the bar, where a barmaid wipes a mug, her hands steady despite the busy room. A few patrons glance up at you, their faces shadowed under hoods or rough hair.

The barmaid freezes slightly at your approach.

"Good evening," you say automatically, though your voice cracks on the second word. "Please — can you tell me where I am? Is this some kind of historical reenactment? A themed settlement?"

She does not answer at once. Her eyes drag over your clothes — the strange cut of your jacket, the metal teeth of the zipper, the fabric of your shirt, your sneakers. Her gaze lingers at the dried blood crusted in your hair.

"Gods preserve us," she mutters softly. "What queer raiment is this?"

A man beside you, thick-bearded and red-cheeked with drink, leans closer. "You've the look of a hedge-witch," he says. "Or some eastern courtesan gone astray."

"I'm not either," you snap, then wince at your own sharpness. "I just need to know where I am."

The barmaid sets down the cup she was polishing. "You stand in Ashford Meadow," she says carefully, as though speaking to a child or a madwoman. "In the Reach. Beneath the rule of Highgarden and our good lord."

You blink at her. "The Reach," you repeat. "Highgarden?"

"Aye." The bearded man squints at you. "Have you taken a blow to the head, girl? You speak as one fresh from fever."

"Do you have a phone?" you ask suddenly, the words tumbling over each other in rising panic. "Anything — some kind of device? I just need to call someone. Emergency services, the police—anyone who can track where I am."

You look from face to face as though one of them might finally understand, might reach into a pocket and pull out something familiar : glass screen, metal casing, signal bars in the corner.

Instead, they stare as though you have begun speaking in tongues.

"A... fone?" the bearded man repeats slowly, brow creasing. "Is that some manner of instrument?"

"Emergency," another mutters under his breath. "What lord bears that name?"

The barmaid's eyes narrow, studying you with growing certainty. "There is no such thing here," she says carefully.

Silence follows. A long, heavy silence.

Your breath quickens. "It's just a phone," you insist, gesturing helplessly with your good hand. "A small device. You can speak into it and someone far away hears you instantly. Anywhere in the world."

A ripple of uneasy murmurs moves through the room.

"Instantly?" the older patron echoes. "Across leagues?"

"That is sorcery," someone whispers.

"It's not sorcery," you snap, then drag a shaking hand through your matted hair. "It's technology. It's normal."

Your throat burns as you swallow. You feel the panic clawing higher, pressing against your ribs. You force yourself to speak more clearly, slower, as though explaining to children.

"I was in a plane crash," you say, despite the rasp in your voice. "A plane. Uh -- an aircraft. It's a machine made of metal, with wings. It flies — high above the clouds. It carries hundreds of people at once. We were traveling, and something went wrong. The engines failed... We fell."

"A craft... that flies?" the barmaid repeats slowly.

"Yes. Like a — like a metal ship with wings. Powered by engines. Fuel. It's not magic, I swear!"

The bearded man barks out a laugh. "A ship of metal that flies?" He slaps the bar. "Hear her! She speaks of dragons clad in steel!"

"It's not a dragon," you insist. "It's technology."

"Tek-nol-oh-gee," he echoes mockingly, tasting the foreign word. "And pray, what manner of sorcery is that?"

"It's not sorcery! It's fucking science. We learned how to build them, they cross oceans in hours."

The laughter fades. Not into amusement — into something else... Unease.

"One ocean is more than enough for mortal men," the barmaid says quietly. "And none cross the skies save dragons."

"Dragons aren't real," you reply automatically.

A man at a nearby table turns in his seat, eyes narrowing. "Not real?"

The bearded man snorts. "Not these hundred years, fool. Since the Dance of the dragons at least. The last dragon died in King's Landing." He looks back at you, smirking. "Though some say their bones still smoke."

You stare at him. "Dragons?"

"Aye, dragons," he says. "Winged fire made flesh. What child's tale did you grow upon, that you deny them so bold?"

Your heart begins to pound harder than it did in the forest. "What the actual fuck are you talking about?"

A few of them flinch at your language. The barmaid's brows draw tight. "Mind your tongue, youn lady."

"I'm serious," you say, voice rising despite yourself. "Dragons aren't real. They're myths. Stories. Reptiles don't breathe fire. That's biologically impossible."

"Bio... what?" the bearded man mutters.

"You speak madness," says another patron, older, thin-faced. "And you bleed through your sleeve."

You glance down. The dark stain has spread further. You're swaying slightly; you hadn't noticed.

"I told you," you say weakly. "The plane crashed. The wreckage must be somewhere in the forest. There were people, some died!"

"Metal that flies," the bearded man says again, softer now.

The barmaid steps out from behind the counter. Up close, her gaze is sharp as a blade. She reaches toward your shoulder but stops short of touching.

"That wound festers if left untended," she says. "Whatever tale you spin, you are hurt. And lost."

"I'm not spinning anything," you whisper, teary eyed. "I woke up in the woods. And now I'm here, and you're talking about dragons like it's normal."

The bearded man studies you, longer this time. "If you be some mummer's trick, you've chosen a strange hour for it," he says. "If you be mad, you are a convincing sort. And if you speak truth..." He trails off.

"If she speaks truth," the barmaid says quietly, "then the gods have cast her far from her home."

You swallow hard. "This isn't funny."

"No," the barmaid agrees. "It is not."

"Help me... please," you whisper, and this time there is no sharpness left in you, no insistence, no frustration — only something small and fraying at the edges.

The room tilts.

You don't notice it at first. Just a subtle sway beneath your feet, as though the floorboards have turned to the deck of a ship. The warmth of the tavern becomes suffocating. The smoke too thick. The faces around you blur at their edges, colors bleeding into one another.

Your fingers tighten around the edge of the bar. You feel the rough grain of the wood beneath your palm, grounding yourself in it, clinging to it as your knees threaten to give.

"I — I don't feel..." you begin, but the words dissolve on your tongue.

The barmaid steps forward quickly now, suspicion replaced with alarm.

"Gods," she mutters.

The throbbing in your shoulder surges, hot and insistent. Your ears ring again (louder this time) drowning out the murmurs rising in the tavern. Your vision tunnels, narrowing to a thin circle of flickering firelight and worried faces.

You try to steady your breathing. Try to stay upright.

But your body has endured too much—blood loss, hunger, fear, the long march through the forest. Survival carried you this far, and now it demands payment.

Your grip slips.

The world lurches violently to one side. Someone reaches for you (you think they do) but your knees buckle before you can tell. The bar rushes upward, or perhaps you fall downward; you cannot tell which.

Sound fractures.

A distant voice curses, another calls for water. Hands brush against your arms.

Then darkness closes in, thick and absolute.

And as consciousness slips through your fingers like water, one final thought drifts through you — slow, terrible, undeniable:

Maybe the plane didn't just fall... Maybe you fell somewhere else entirely.

When you wake, it is to the scent of lavender and smoke.

The ceiling above you is low and slanted, beams dark with age. Morning light spills through a small round window, pale and soft, catching dust in the air. Your body feels heavy, ached through, but cleaner. The wound at your shoulder is bandaged tightly in linen, the cloth stiff with herbs and salve.

You are lying in a narrow bed beneath roughspun blankets, not the tavern floor.

A chair scrapes softly beside you.

"You've woken, then."

It is the barmaid. In daylight she looks older than you first thought — lines at the corners of her mouth, silver threaded through her dark braid. Her gaze is steady, practical.

"My name is Clare," she says, as though that settles something. "You took a bad turn last eve. Near bled out on my floor, you did."

You swallow, throat dry. "You... helped me."

"Aye. I've seen worse than you stagger through that door." A faint huff of amusement touches her lips. "Though none dressed like some Lysene mummer with iron teeth sewn in her jerkin." She eyes the zipper of your jacket with suspicion.

You almost laugh, almost.

You don't ask how long you've been asleep. You don't ask how she carried you. You don't ask why this still feels real.

Clare pours water into a clay cup and presses it into your hands. "Best you drink slow."

You obey.

There is a pause before she speaks again, and when she does, her tone shifts — less wary now. More... resolved.

"You asked where you are."

Your fingers tighten around the cup. "Yes."

She folds her hands in her apron. "You are in Westeros."

The word means nothing to you. You wait for the punchline, it does not come.

"What is that?" you ask quietly.

She does not look at you as though you are mad this time. No narrowed eyes. No guarded distance.

"Westeros is the realm of the Seven Kingdoms," she says, patient as a mother instructing a child. "North and South alike. There is the North, vast and cold, ruled from Winterfell. The Vale of Arryn, ringed in mountains. The Riverlands, green and oft bloodied. The Westerlands, rich in gold. The Stormlands, fierce and sea-battered. Dorne, hot and proud in the south. And the Reach—" she gestures lightly toward the window " — where you now lie, beneath the rule of Highgarden."

You stare at her. "Westeros," you repeat faintly.

"Aye."

"And Ashford Meadow?"

"A village in the Reach. Not a grand one, but honest."

Your heart is hammering, but you force your face to remain composed. Do not unravel. Do not scream. She helped you, don't look mad.

She studies you for a moment before asking, "What is your name, child?"

You tell her.

She rolls the sound over her tongue once, twice.

"An uncommon name," she says at last. "I've heard stranger, mayhaps, in port towns and from passing traders — but not oft. It sits foreign on the ear."

"That's because I'm foreign," you murmur.

"So you are."

She hesitates. "Have you kin? A father? A mother?"

"Yes," you answer automatically — then the truth fractures under the weight of reality. They are not here. They cannot be here. If this is real, then they are --- " You swallow. "They're... dead," you finish instead. "Probably."

Clare's mouth tightens. "That is a hard thing to say so young."

You say nothing. She seems to read something in your silence but does not press. Stern, yes — but not unkind.

"Tell me more," you say carefully. "About... this place."

Clare shifts in her chair.

"The realm is ruled now by House Targaryen," she says. "Dragons were their sigil — and once, their strength. Silver hair and violet eyes, near unearthly in their beauty. The blood of old Valyria runs in them. Kings and queens upon the Iron Throne in King's Landing."

You feel cold despite the blankets.

"They had dragons?" you ask.

"Once," she says. "Great winged beasts of fire and shadow. Long gone now... though their name still carries flame enough."

Targaryen.

You manage a slow nod, as though absorbing simple geography instead of the collapse of everything you understood about reality.

Inside, you are spiraling. But you keep your face calm.

You cannot afford to look any more mad than you already sound. You sit propped against the pillows, hands folded tight in your lap so she does not see them tremble. The names still mean nothing to you — nothing solid, nothing real.

Clare seems to take your silence for confusion, not disbelief, and continues in the same patient tone.

"Each of the kingdoms's got its great house," she says, adjusting the blanket at your feet as though that, too, is part of the lesson. "That's how it's always been. Great lords over lesser lords, bannermen sworn and bound. In the North it's Stark — grim folk, so they say, but honorable. In the Westerlands, Lannister — rich as sin, with gold in their hills. The Vale's ruled by Arryn, high up in their mountains. Stormlands by Baratheon, fierce and loud. Dorne's Martell, sly and sun-kissed. The Riverlands... Tully. And here in the Reach, we bend the knee to House Tyrell of Highgarden."

She pauses, then adds, "Though above all of 'em sits the Iron Throne... the blood of the dragon."

You only look at her, even more confused.

"That's the Targaryens," she says, and there's a faint shift in her voice — half reverent, half wary. "They come from old Valyria, they did. Not like other folk. Hair pale as spun silver, eyes purple as a bruise at dusk. Pretty as paintings, most of 'em. Too pretty, some'd say. And proud with it."

She leans back slightly.

You stay very still.

"The king now is Daeron," she continues. "Daeron the Good, they call him. Peaceful sort, so the tales say. More book than blade—but wise, and kinder than most kings get to be."

Your pulse skips.

"He wed a Dornish princess," Clare says, nodding approvingly. "Brought Dorne into the realm proper, he did. Not by fire nor sword, but marriage. Folk grumbled at first—Dornish are... different—but peace is peace."

She leans back slightly.

"He's four sons, too. Four princes."

Your throat tightens.

"The eldest is Baelor." She smiles faintly. "Baelor Breakspear they name him. Not for breaking his own spear, mind — but for shattering others in tourney. Brave warrior that ended the Blackfyre rebellions... Strong as an ox and twice as steady. Darker than most Targaryens, on account o' his Dornish mother. Black hair, not silver. But noble through and through, they say. Honorable. The sort a smallfolk can look upon and feel safe."

You didnt know if you understood anything, but you just nod to let he know you're listening.

"The second's Prince Aerys," she goes on. "Bookish, some say. Close with his brother. Not so broad in the shoulders, but sharp in the mind."

She ticks another finger.

"Then there's Rhaegel. Quiet one. Keeps to himself. Some whisper he's... touched in the head, but court's full of whispers." She shrugs. "Hard to know truth from wine-talk."

"And the last?" you ask carefully.

"Maekar." Her expression shifts slightly. Firmer. "Maekar's iron. They call him the Anvil. Hard man. Hard face and judgments. A warrior through and through."

The room feels smaller the more she speaks.

"These princes — they ride, they train, they wed, and one day one o' them will sit the Iron Throne after their father," Clare says. "That's the way of it."

She studies you now.

"You truly never heard the name Targaryen?"

You force yourself to shake your head.

Clare studies you for a long moment, then snorts softly. "Then you're either lost beyond sense... or bonkers... or both."

A weak sound escapes you — something between a laugh and a sob. Your eyes burn, glossing over despite your effort to stay composed.

"It feels like I'm dreaming," you murmur. "Or trapped in a nightmare I can't wake from. Maybe I already died. Maybe that crash — " your throat tightens " — maybe that was it. And this is... something after."

Clare's brows draw together. She looks at you as one might look at a child claiming to see ghosts.

"Girl," she says firmly, pressing a rough but not unkind hand to your wrist, "this is as real as the floor beneath us. You're flesh and bone and stubborn breath. Dead folk don't bleed nor faint in my taproom."

She dips a cloth into a basin of water and lays it across your forehead. The coolness steadies you.

"Mayhaps the gods sent you," she adds, quieter now. "Stranger things have happened than a lost maid stumbling out o' the wood." She tilts her head. "What was it you said brought you? That thing what flies?"

You hesitate. For the first time, the thought solidifies in you—not just fear, not just shock. A theory. Alternate world? Different time?

Maybe you died in yours, maybe you crossed into this one. If so... this is the past.

"What year is it?" you ask instead of answering her.

She doesn't find the question strange. "Two-hundred and nine, after Conquest."

You almost choke. The number slams into you harder than any physical blow.

When she looks at you sharply, you force your expression to smooth out.

"Right," you manage faintly. "Of course."

You draw a slow breath. "It's called a plane," you begin again. "The thing that flies. It's... a craft. Made of metal. It carries many people at once through the sky."

Her eyes narrow slightly, but not in mockery this time — only confusion.

You stop yourself. "I'd rather you not repeat that to anyone," you say quickly. "Please. People already think I'm mad. I need... time... To uhm -- understand." Your fingers twist nervously together in your lap. "And I'm sorry," you add, shame creeping in. "I don't have any money. No coin. I must be nothing but a burden."

Clare makes a dismissive sound. "Nonsense."

She wrings out the cloth and sets it back upon your brow.

"The gods don't send burdens without cause," she says. "And the sept teaches we are to shelter the innocent, and protect women who've no shield of their own. You seem to be both."

She smiles then, a genuine one. You have no idea what a sept truly is, but you nod as though you do.

"You're welcome to stay," she continues. "As long as you've need. I've room enough. Been alone these years since my husband passed. My sons are wed and gone to their own fields, my daughter to her husband."

She gives you a sideways look. "Wouldn't mind the company... Nor the help. For a time." She winks.

Something tight in your chest loosens for the first time since the forest.

You are in 209 AC. In the Reach. Under the reign of King Daeron the Good.

And somehow... impossibly... alive.

Days pass.

You recover beneath Clare's roof.

It takes effort not to interfere. You are a neurosurgeon — years of study, of sterile rooms and surgical lights, of steady hands mapping the fragile architecture of the human brain. You know exactly what kind of trauma a blow behind the ear can cause. You know the risks of infection in a puncture wound. You know how crude linen and boiled wine are poor substitutes for antibiotics.

But you also know something far more dangerous: none of what you know exists here.

There are no cultures grown in labs, no imaging machines, no sterile theaters. Even the words would betray you. So you say nothing.

You let Clare work. She cleans the gash at your hairline with vinegar and something that smells sharply of rosemary. She packs the wound at your shoulder with poultices made of comfrey and garlic, muttering about "drawing out the rot." She binds it tight and scolds you when you try to move too much.

You grit your teeth and allow it.

And somehow... you heal. Not perfectly of course, not comfortably... but you heal.

Clare gives you clothing once you are steady on your feet — simple linen shifts, woolen kirtles, aprons sturdy enough for tavern work. Your old clothes she folds carefully and sets in a small wooden chest at the foot of your bed.

You hesitate one night, staring at them. Part of you thinks they are dangerous : proof of something unnatural. Something that could get you accused of witchcraft or worse. Burning them in the hearth would be safest. But you cannot.

They are the last thread tying you to your world.

You woke here with nothing else. No suitcase, no passport, no phone. Just those clothes. So you keep them, folded and hidden. Sacred in a way you cannot explain.

In return for shelter, you help.

You scrub tables, pour ale, carry trenchers of bread and stew. You learn how to move through the tavern without drawing too much notice, how to lower your voice into something less sharp, less modern. You practice speaking as they do, you swallow words that do not belong here.

And you listen, the tavern is a well of stories.

You learn of the Narrow Sea and the lands beyond it : the Free Cities of Braavos, Pentos, Lys, Myr. You hear of sellswords and merchant princes, of ships larger than anything Ashford has ever seen.

You learn of the Wall in the far North, though most speak of it as a distant curiosity rather than a living defense.

And always — always — the talk circles back to the royal family.

The cursed yet favored Targaryens.

Traveling hedge knights drink heavily and boast loudly. They speak of the king, Daeron the Good, as a scholar-king, gentle but shrewd. They speak of his sons with admiration, and sometimes mockery.

They speak often of the Blackfyre Rebellion.

You piece it together from fragments: Daemon Blackfyre, the king's half-brother, claiming the throne. Lords choosing sides. They speak Prince Baelor's name with particular reverence.

"Breakspear held the line at the Redgrass Field," one knight says, pounding his cup for emphasis. "Fought like the Warrior himself had taken his arm."

"And the young prince beside him," another adds. "Maekar — gods, that one fights like a hammer striking steel."

Maekar the Anvil.

You store every detail carefully.

Late one evening, after too much ale, a hedge knight leans toward you with wine-thick breath and grins. "Strange folk, dragons' blood," he says. "Keep it pure, they do."

"How?" you ask, feigning mild curiosity.

"Marry their own," he says. "Always have. Brother to sister, uncle to niece. Keeps the dragon strong."

You still. Cousins marrying cousins does not shock you; history in your own world was full of such unions among nobility. Politics above affection.

But brothers to sisters? Uncles to nieces? Something twists uneasily in your stomach.

"For the blood of the dragon," the knight repeats, as if that explains everything. "They ain't like us."

You nod slowly, hiding your reaction behind lowered lashes. You know too much about genetics to find comfort in that tradition.

The more you hear of the dragonlords, the more they take root in your thoughts.

It frightens you — how easily your mind conjures them now. Silver hair catching sunlight. Violet eyes assessing battlefields. Armor ringing beneath banners stitched with three-headed dragons.

You should be terrified. You are terrified.

But you are fascinated too.

"They've that way about them," Clare tells you one night as she plucks a chicken by the back door, feathers drifting like snow around her boots. "Targaryens. Folk fear 'em, aye—but they look twice all the same. Like staring at a flame. You know it can burn you, but still you draw close."

You say nothing, because she is right.

At night, when the tavern empties and the shutters are barred, when the last drunk has staggered home and the hearth burns low, the silence becomes unbearable. That is when your old life creeps in.

You think of your mother's voice, your father's tired jokes, your friends sending you messages you will never answer.

You picture the hospital operating room: bright, sterile, humming with focus. The years of study — undergraduate, medical school, residency, fellowship. More than a decade of sacrifice to become what you were. A neurosurgeon.

Here, you scrub ale from tables.

You turn your face into the thin pillow and let the tears come soundlessly, shoulders shaking beneath rough wool blankets. You do not want Clare to hear, you do not want her pity.

Some nights you wonder if God — your God, and not theirs — has punished you. For ambition, for pride, or neglecting faith until crisis demanded it.

Clare notices your restlessness. She begins taking you to the sept on certain mornings.

It is a modest building of pale stone, its walls limewashed and clean, the seven-pointed star carved above its wooden doors. Inside, the air smells of beeswax and incense. Light filters through colored glass in small round panes, painting the floor in muted blues and reds.

At the front stand seven carved figures:

The Father with his scales. The Mother with her outstretched arms. The Warrior armored and stern. The Maiden serene and young. The Smith strong at his forge. The Crone with her lantern raised. The Stranger, faceless and shadowed.

It unsettles you how familiar it feels. Not the shapes, but the structure, the reverence, the kneeling. It reminds you of Catholic churches : statues of saints instead of these aspects, candles lit for guidance, confession whispered in corners.

Clare shows you how to light a taper properly. How to bow your head. Which figure to pray to for protection, for guidance, for forgiveness.

"Sometimes," she says softly before the Mother's statue, "we don't need answers. Just strength enough to bear what's given."

You nod. You do not know which god — if any — has brought you here. But kneeling beside her steadies something inside you.

Late at night, when the tavern quiets, Clare talks more.

She tells you of her late husband : broad-shouldered, fond of dice, gone three winters now from a fever that took him quick. She tells you of her sons, married and settled in neighboring villages. Of her daughter, wed to a miller.

Her stories are ordinary. Human. And then she asks about you.

You tell her about your family in soft outlines. A father who worked too much, a mother who called too often. Siblings who teased. Friends who felt like siblings.

You do not tell her about surgical residencies or night shifts or conferences. You do not tell her that in your world women lead hospitals, argue in courtrooms, command armies of knowledge. You do not tell her that you studied more than twelve years to carve tumors from human brains.

It would sound like witchcraft, or arrogance. Or both.

So you let her believe you are simply a woman who lost her kin.

She (and others) ask often why you are not wed.

It happens at least twice a week. Patrons with ale-heavy breath, neighboring wives who peer too closely, even Clare herself once or twice.

"You're beautiful," one woman remarks while kneading dough beside you. "And not lame nor dim. Why's no man claimed you?"

Claimed.

The word stings.

You quickly learned that by their measure, you are... late. A woman of your age should have been married years ago, bearing children, running a household.

So you crafted a shield.

"My husband died," you say quietly whenever asked.

The word husband tastes strange on your tongue. It works. The questions stop at once, and faces soften. Some murmur condolences, others nod with that grim understanding of life's cruelty.

A widow is acceptable. An unmarried woman past her prime is suspicious. You hate the lie, but you cling to it.

It keeps them from pressing further.

And each night, as you lie in Clare's spare room, listening to the wind sweep across Ashford Meadow, you feel yourself splitting in two.

The woman you were : educated, modern, certain. And the woman you must become : quiet, cautious, shaped by a world that burns the different.

For a while, it is fine. Not good, not truly, but ... predictable. Yes, that was the word.

You wake before dawn because there is nothing else to do.

There are no alarms here, no glowing numbers on a bedside clock, no distant traffic humming beyond double-paned windows. Only the slow thinning of darkness and the cold that seeps through stone and wood alike.

Your body has learned the rhythm of this place. You rise when the air is still blue, when frost clings to the edges of the well and your breath ghosts in front of you. For a few fragile seconds each morning, suspended between sleep and waking, you forget where you are.

Then the ceiling comes into focus — low beams, smoke-stained and rough. And you remember. Oh, you remember.

You dress in layers of wool that scratch at your skin. You tie your hair back in a braid bun. You descend the narrow steps into the tavern's common room where embers glow faintly in the hearth like watchful eyes.

Clare is often already there, sleeves rolled to her elbows, flour dusting her forearms.

You knead dough beside her, your palms pressing into it rhythmically, folding and turning, building gluten without consciously thinking the word gluten. The repetition steadies your breathing. It quiets your thoughts.

Haul water, scrub tankards, sweep rushes from the floor. Wipe down tables sticky with spilled ale and old laughter.

Listen. You have become very good at listening.

Men speak freely around you now. You are furniture to them : useful, unthreatening, forgettable. They argue about crop yields and taxes and the price of grain. They whisper about lords and feasts and marriages.

You pretend not to care.

Days blur together until they are less like individual memories and more like one long stretch of endurance. Morning work, midday rush, evening exhaustion. Sleep heavy and dreamless — until it isn't.

Routine becomes a kind of mercy, routine leaves little room for panic. You almost begin to believe you could remain here. That you could build something small and steady in the shadow of someone else's story, a quiet life.

And that thought frightens you. You were not raised for invisibility.

You were raised on achievement charts and acceptance letters. On the belief that your mind was your greatest weapon. You spent more than twelve years carving your path — undergraduate degree, medical school, residency, fellowship. Nights without sleep, holidays missed, and relationships sacrificed.

You remember the first time you held a scalpel over an exposed brain. The weight and the terror of it. The precision required, the knowledge that a millimeter too far could steal someone's speech, their memory, their life.

You had power there, purpose even. Here, your hands smell of onions and yeast.

Some days you accept it with surprising calm. Other days it claws at you.

You step outside behind the tavern when it becomes too much. You brace your hands against the cold stone and breathe through the ache in your chest. You look up at a sky that feels familiar and foreign all at once.

And then the thought comes. Soft at first, tentative : What if this isn't real? What if the plane never truly crashed?

What if your body lies somewhere in a hospital bed (machines humming, nurses whispering) while your mind constructs this elaborate medieval hallucination to fill the void?

It would explain the impossibility of it all. The way history here feels both written and unwritten.

And if it is a dream — if it is a coma — then there is a way out.

The idea slithers in slowly, like something ashamed of itself.

If you died here... would you wake there? You imagine it in flashes. Cold river water filling your lungs — and then air, clean and filtered, flooding them instead. Darkness closing in, and then fluorescent lights burning your vision as your eyes snap open.

Your mother's voice breaking as she says your name. The fantasy is intoxicating in its cruelty. For a moment, you want to believe it. But then the rational part of you (the surgeon, the scientist) rises up.

What if you are wrong? What if this is not a dream but a displacement? What if whatever force tore you from your world placed you here entirely?

If you die in this body, what if you simply die?

No hospital, no second chance, no awakening.

Just nothing. Oblivion. You weigh it clinically sometimes, as if evaluating a risky procedure: probability unknown. Outcome irreversible.

You survived the crash — however impossible that survival looks now. You clawed your way through confusion and hunger and fear. You adapted and endured.

Would you truly throw all of that away on a theory born from desperation?

Another voice whispers cruelly: You're too afraid. And maybe you are. But another voice answers back: You fought too hard to live to surrender it so cheaply.

Even if living means kneading dough in a world that should not exist. Even if living means being small for now. So you choose the mundane. You choose to wake before dawn. You choose to haul water. You choose to survive.

And every morning you open your eyes beneath those smoke-darkened beams, you acknowledge the truth that frightens and steadies you all at once: If you were meant to die in that crash, you would have, but you are still here.

Which means, somehow, your story is not finished.

Until one afternoon, Clare sits across from you at the scrubbed wooden table, hands folded, eyes thoughtful in a way that makes your stomach tighten.

"I've been thinkin'," she says slowly. "I'm not as spry as I was. Winter's harder on the bones each year. My Ellyn's wrote again—her husband's done well for himself. Big house, servants and all that. She's asked me to come live with 'em proper."

The words hang in the air between you, you feel your expression change before you can stop it — your features twisting into something unguarded. Confusion first, then disbelief, then something far more fragile.

What does she mean, she's leaving?

Clare isn't just the woman who owns the tavern. She is the reason you did not lose your mind in the first week, she is routine and familiarity and the one steady voice in a world that still feels like it's made of shifting sand.

She is proof that kindness exists here.

Without her, the fragile structure you've built to keep yourself upright feels as though it might collapse. She has been your anchor, your interpreter, your quiet reassurance that you are not entirely alone in this strange place.

And now she speaks of leaving as if it is simple. As if it does not feel like the ground giving way beneath your feet.

She gives a small shrug. "I'll be closin' the tavern by harvest's end."

You hadn't realized how much of your fragile security rested on these walls.

She watches your face, then reaches across the table and pats your hand. "You can come with me, if you like. There'd be space. Ellyn's good-hearted. Or — " she hesitates, " — there's Lord Ashford."

You blink. "Lord Ashford?"

"Aye. The lord of these lands. His sons come drink here often enough. I know the family. Decent folk, for nobles." She snorts lightly. "If you go to the castle and tell him you're sent by me, with a letter in hand, he'll not turn you away. They'll always have need of another maid."

A maid.

From neurosurgeon to tavern girl to a fucking maid in a medieval castle.

Your pride stirs, then you crush it. Pride is useless here, pride does not feed you.

That night you lie awake long after the hearth goes cold. You weigh your options carefully. Go with Clare? Live out your days under another woman's roof, dependent again. Safe — but small.

Or go to the castle. Risk the unknown, place yourself closer to power, closer to the currents of this world that still feel like a story unfolding around you. Maybe you could find help, to go back where you came from?

By morning, you have decided.

"I'll go to the castle," you tell her quietly.

Clare's smile is soft, but there is sadness behind it. "Thought you might." She cups your cheek briefly, like a mother might. "I'd have liked you with me, truth be told. But you've never been one to settle where you don't mean to."

You wonder if she sees more than you think.

She presses a small pouch of coins into your palm. "For a proper gown. Can't have you showin' up lookin' like you've slept in my flour sacks."

Your throat tightens. "Clare, I — "

"Hush." She waves you off. "You've worked hard enough for your keep. Let an old woman feel generous."

The last morning comes too quickly.

You stand outside the tavern with a small bundle of your belongings — two dresses, your old clothes, a comb, the worn shoes you've grown used to, and Clare's folded letter sealed with wax.

The air smells of damp earth and distant hay.

You throw your arms around her, unable to hold back the tears now. "Thank you. For everything."

She stiffens for half a second (unused to such open affection) then pats your back awkwardly. "Oh, off with you. You'll make me weep, and I've no patience for that." Her voice wobbles despite her attempt at gruffness. "It's been a pleasure, girl. Truly."

You step back, wiping your face.

As you walk away down the road toward Ashford Castle rising pale against the hills, a realization settles heavily over you. You were lucky. So impossibly lucky.

You could have woken in a ditch, in the hands of cruel men, sold, accused of witchcraft. Left to starve.

Instead, you found Clare. A widow with flour and ale on her hands and kindness in her bones.

You glance back once more. She is still standing there, small against the tavern door, watching until you round the bend.

Then you face forward.

The castle looms closer with every step — stone walls high and unyielding, banners snapping in the wind.

Your heart pounds so hard you feel it in your throat, another life ending, another beginning waiting. And you walk toward it alone.

The road stretches ahead in a pale ribbon of packed earth, damp from the night's mist. Your bundle feels heavier than it should, though it carries little more than spare clothing and Clare's sealed letter. Each step takes you farther from the tavern — the only place in this world that has ever felt remotely safe.

You've never really ventured beyond it before.

Not properly.

You told yourself it was because there was too much work to be done. Because Clare needed you. Because the village was small enough and the world beyond it irrelevant.

But the truth is simpler... You were afraid.

Afraid of being asked questions you couldn't answer. Afraid someone sharper than a drunken farmer would notice the way you hesitate before speaking, the way you choose your words too carefully. Afraid of slipping — of referencing something impossible, of revealing how little you truly understand.

So you stayed small.

You stayed within the tavern's walls, where you knew the rhythm of the day and the measure of each man's temper. Where invisibility protected you.

The castle had always existed at the edge of your vision.

You'd seen it from afar : its pale stone towers rising above the trees, banners fluttering against the sky. A distant shape against the horizon, more storybook than real. You never let yourself think about it too deeply.

Castles meant lords, lords meant scrutiny, and well... scrutiny meant danger.

But now, as the structure grows larger with every step, it is no longer a distant silhouette. The battlements carved in clean lines, the guards posted at the gates, the gleam of sunlight against arrow slits and iron-bound doors.

It is real. Terrifyingly real. And you are walking straight toward it.

There is no tavern wall to hide behind now. No Clare to answer for you, no familiar faces to soften the edges of this world.

Just you, alone.

Your heart pounds — not only from fear, but from something else too. A reluctant awareness that this is movement. That you are no longer merely surviving inside borrowed safety. You are stepping into the wider world. Whatever it does to you next, it will not be because you stayed hidden.

The gates rise above you like something carved from judgment itself.

Two guards stand at attention, mail glinting softly in the afternoon light, spears grounded but ready. They look bored more than anything else, until they see you.

A lone woman, simply dressed... with no escort. Their eyes immediately narrow in polite suspicion.

You force your shoulders to stay relaxed. To look small, harmless. You lower your gaze just enough — not submissive, but respectful. You have learned the balance.

"I beg your pardon, ser," you begin carefully, smoothing your accent, sanding down the sharper edges of your speech. "I've come seekin' Lord Ashford." She says adds quickly. "If it please you."

One guard shifts his weight. "For what purpose?"

Your pulse flutters, this is where tone matters, word choice matters. Too bold and you are insolent... Too educated and you are strange.

"I've heard there be need of a maid in the castle," you say softly shielding the sun from your face with the back of your hand. "I was sent by Mistress Clare — the tavern keeper at Ashford Meadow. She bid me bring a letter to his lordship."

At the mention of Clare, something eases in the older guard's expression. Recognition, perhaps or familiarity.

"The widow who keeps the alehouse by the crossroads?" he asks.

"Aye, ser."

They exchange a glance.

You keep your hands folded loosely before you, heart hammering but face composed. You are acutely aware of every movement — how you stand, how you breathe, how long you hold eye contact. You cannot afford to appear odd.

After a moment, the older guard nods. "Wait here."

He disappears through the gates, leaving you alone beneath the weight of stone and sky. You resist the urge to fidget. This is nothing like walking into a hospital administrator's office. There, you belonged. Here, you are asking to be tolerated.

The guard returns sooner than you expect.

"You'll come," he says simply.

The gates open. The sound alone (iron and wood shifting) makes something inside you jolt. You step through into the castle yard.

It is larger than it ever seemed from afar. Stable boys hurry past leading horses, servants cross with baskets of linens. The smell of hay, smoke, and damp stone fills the air. The keep rises ahead, windows narrow and watchful.

You are led through corridors cooler than the outside air, torchlight flickering along the walls. Tapestries hang between stone columns — hunting scenes, battles, the Ashford sigil, a sun in orange back, worked in careful thread.

Your shoes echo faintly on the floor. You remind yourself to walk neither too quickly nor too slowly.

At last, the guard stops before a wooden door banded with iron. He knocks once, then pushes it open.

"The girl from the tavern, m'lord."

You step inside. The solar is warmer than the corridors, sunlight filtering through arched windows. Shelves lined with ledgers and scrolls. A heavy desk near the far wall.

Lord Ashford stands beside it.

He is older than you expected — hair threaded with gray, beard neatly kept. His tunic is finely made but not ostentatious. He looks like a man accustomed to command without needing to shout.

His gaze settles on you, assessing but not cruel. You drop into a small, practiced curtsey, like Clar told you to do if you see nobility.

"My lord," you say, careful, respectful. "I thank you for granting me audience."

He gestures faintly. "You're sent by Clare?"

"Yes, m'lord." You step forward just enough to offer the sealed letter with both hands. "She asked that I place this in your care."

He takes it, breaks the wax, and reads in silence.

You keep your eyes lowered, but not to the floor entirely — focused somewhere near the edge of his desk. Submissive enough, not suspicious. At last, he folds the letter.

"She speaks well of you," he says. "Says you've worked honest these past months. That you're steady."

Relief flickers through you, but you keep your expression modest. "I do my best, m'lord."

"And you seek a place in my household?"

"Yes, m'lord. As a maid, if it please you. I've experience keepin' house, tendin' tables, seein' to chores as needed." All true.

His eyes linger on you a moment longer. You fight the instinct to fill the silence. In this world, silence belongs to the powerful.

At last, he nods.

"There is always work to be done. You'll report to the housekeeper. She'll judge your usefulness better than I."

Your lungs loosen for the first time since you reached the gates.

"Thank you, my lord," you say, despite the tremor in your chest. "You'll not find me idle."

He studies you once more, as if committing your face to memory.

"We shall see," he replies evenly.

And just like that, another door opens in this strange, impossible life of yours.

The woman waiting for you in the hallway is nothing like Clare. She is older, posture rigid, shoulders squared, and the smell of old wood clings to her like a second skin. Her grey hair is pulled back in a tight knot, gray streaked with stubborn black. Her eyes assess you, and her yellowed teeth glint faintly when she murmurs a greeting.

"You must be the girl from the tavern," she says, each word precise. "Esthis, the housekeeper. Do not waste my time, girl. You are to learn quickly, or you will not last here."

You bow your head. "Yes, Mistress Esthis. I shall do my best."

"Your best will not suffice," she mutters, inspecting you as though you were a piece of furniture she was considering keeping or discarding. "But perhaps it will do until you prove otherwise."

She leads you through a series of corridors, the walls lined with tapestries and shields, the air smelling faintly of incense and wax polish. You keep your head down, careful not to stumble, careful not to breathe too loudly.

"You are to serve the youngest of Lady Ashford's charges," she continues. "Lady Gwyn. The boy-knights are rarely home; they are off gallivanting, showing themselves in tournaments and jousts. Your attention is to be entirely on the girl."

Lady Gwyn. You've heard the name before, from the village gossip, from overheard tales of minor nobility. Twelve years old, soon to be thirteen.

"She turns thirteen soon," Esthis adds, as though noting it for the record, "and you are now her maid. You will anticipate her needs. You will serve without complaint. Do not fail."

You nod again, swallowing the lump in your throat. "I understand."

She grunts, apparently satisfied, and guides you to a small chamber tucked beneath the eaves. The room is modest — bare walls of oak, a narrow bed with a rough woolen blanket, a small chest at the foot. There is a single window that lets in pale sunlight and a draft that chills your shoulders despite your layered clothing.

"This is where you will stay," Esthis says. She gestures to the chest. "Place your things there, and othing more. Keep it tidy, keep it neat. This is not your home, girl. Remember that."

You step inside and lay your bag upon the chest. The room feels impossibly small compared to the open space of Clare's tavern. But it is yours, for now.

Esthis leaves, the door clicking behind her with the kind of authority that leaves no room for argument. You exhale, leaning against the rough wall, feeling the first true weight of your new life settle on your shoulders.

Late at night, when the castle has quieted and the echoes of the day have faded into the thick stone walls, you find yourself in the small, shared quarters with the other maids. They sit cross-legged on worn floorboards, hushed whispers weaving between the shadows of the room. A candle flickers in the corner, throwing dancing light across their faces, and you instinctively smooth your hands over your lap, careful to remain composed.

The conversation drifts from spilled ink to errands and laundry, until, inevitably, it circles back to you.

"You look so young," one whispers, voice tinged with curiosity and something like envy. "So... beautiful. How comes a maiden such as you is not wed? Nor with child yet?"

The question hits with a peculiar weight. It is not asked with malice, but with the casual certainty of those for whom such questions are ordinary, unavoidable truths of life. In this world, it is taken as strange for a woman of your apparent age not to be promised, married, or expecting.

You feel the heat rise to your cheeks, the memory of your modern world pressed beneath the folds of this strange one. You were never expected to marry at twelve, thirteen, fifteen — not when ambition and knowledge drove you. And yet, here, in this stone chamber with flickering candlelight, it feels as if your very existence contradicts the order of things.

"I..." you begin carefully, forcing a calmness into your tone, steadying it against the strange ache that has lodged in your chest. "...My husband... he is dead."

A pause ripples through the room, like a soft wind through cobwebs. Their eyes widen slightly. It is enough to silence further questions, though curiosity lingers in the air. You let it.

"And... that is all I shall say of it," you continue, with the faintest tilt of your chin, enough to signal finality without arrogance. Your fingers play lightly in your lap, knotting and unknotting in the candlelight. "It is not for me to speak more."

It is strange (achingly strange) not to speak the way you once did.

In your old life, your words were quick, precise by education and habit. You debated colleagues., you issued instructions in operating rooms without lowering your eyes to anyone.

Here, a misplaced word can mark you as odd. Or worse : arrogant. Or worse still : dangerous.

So you trim your speech carefully. You soften consonants the way the peasants of the Reach do. You round your vowels. You replace perhaps with mayhap, yes with aye, I understand with as you say, my lady.

At first it feels like acting in a play that never ends. You stumble and overcorrect. You lie awake at night replaying conversations, wincing at phrases that may have sounded too polished, too foreign.

But you learn.

You listen the way you always have : absorbing cadence, rhythm, slang. You let it seep into you until it becomes second nature. Now when you speak, it no longer feels entirely borrowed.

Your life settles into routine again, and you are grateful for it.

You scrub floors until your hands crack and bleed in the colder months. You carry water up narrow staircases until your shoulders burn and tremble. You air linens, mend small tears, brush out tangles from silks more expensive than anything you once owned.

You learn to curtsy properly : deep enough to show respect, not so deep as to seem theatrical. You learn when to speak and when silence is safer. You say "My lady" and "My lord" with the right balance of humility and steadiness.

You lower your eyes when addressed.

It is stricter than the tavern ever was. Cleaner, and more controlled. There are no drunken men grabbing at sleeves here — but there are expectations heavier than ale-stained hands.

And then there is Lady Gwyn Ashford. Soon to be thirteen, and painfully aware of it.

She takes a liking to you faster than you expect.

Perhaps it is because you are not cowed by her in the way some of the younger maids are. Perhaps it is because, despite your careful speech, something in you still feels different. Or perhaps she simply senses kindness.

She reminds you, painfully, of girls you once knew. Of nervous patients before minor procedures. Of your friend's daughter who used to sit in hospital waiting rooms swinging her legs. Of nieces who asked too many questions and laughed too loudly.

Lady Gwyn is curious in a way that borders on restless. She is clever — though not always encouraged to be. Bored, often. She speaks constantly of marriage prospects, of what sort of knight or lord she might one day wed, of the duties of a lady, of how she must represent House Ashford well.

Sometimes you see the tension beneath it, the awareness that childhood is slipping from her like sand through fingers.

She asks questions when no one else is near. "What was it like, before you came here?"

"Do smallfolk truly wed for love?"

"Are boys in the villages handsome?"

You answer carefully, always carefully.

And sometimes (when the door is closed and no one important lingers) you let your old self slip through the cracks.

She once described a boy who strutted through the courtyard, boasting of future glory.

You smiled before you could stop yourself. "In my... village, we'd call that peacockin'. All feathers and noise."

She blinked at you. Then laughed—bright and delighted.

"You are strange," she declared. "But funny."

She says you are very pretty, too. That one unsettles you more.

Because here, beauty is not curated the way it was in your world. Peasant women work until sun and wind harden their skin. They do not have the time (or luxury) for careful grooming. In your old life, appearance was maintenance. Skincare, haircare, fitness. It was expected, almost clinical in its routine.

Here, it stands out.

You keep clean because you must. You tie your hair neatly because it is habit. You hold yourself straight because years of professional posture never left you.

And she notices.

"You do not look like the other maids," she once said bluntly, studying you. "You look... finer."

You laughed it off. "Hard work will mend that soon enough, my lady."

But you see it in her eyes : curiosity. Surprise that someone who claims to be smallfolk carries herself differently. And then, inevitably, she asks the question that seems to haunt this world.

"Why are you not wed?"

It is not accusation, it is confusion. You smooth her hair as you've done a hundred times before, fingers gentle as you braid it for the evening.

"My husband died," you say softly, the words practiced and steady.

She goes still. "Oh."

And then her face shifts (not to gossip, not to suspicion) but to genuine sorrow. "I am sorry," she says earnestly. "Truly."

And you believe her.

Lady Gwyn is a truly lovely girl, not yet hardened by politics, not yet burdened by expectation.

You dip your head slightly. "It was some years past, my lady. I have made my peace."

It is easier now to tell the lie. It rolls from your tongue with less resistance. Because in a way, you have lost something. An entire life, a future, people who will never know what became of you.

She leans into your touch as you finish her braid.

"I hope," she says thoughtfully, "that I wed a good man. Not one who boasts like a peacock."

You smile despite yourself.

"I hope so too, my lady."

She smiles at you then, the kind of smile that belongs to a girl and not yet a lady trained for court. Through the mirror, her eyes meet yours.

"I really like your necklace."

Instinctively, your fingers rise to your collarbone, brushing the thin chain. You rarely think of it during the day (it has become part of you) but now it feels suddenly heavy.

It is small. A delicate golden heart, no larger than the pad of your thumb, engraved with your initials. The chain is fine, almost fragile. In your old world it would have been ordinary.

Here, it feels dangerously precious.

You had removed your watch the first week — its glass face, its ticking hands, its impossible design too strange for this place. You keep it wrapped in cloth at the bottom of your chest.

But the necklace... you could not part with it. It was your mother's gift. A graduation present. "So you'll always carry home with you," she had said, fastening it at your neck.

You swallow gently. "Thank you, my lady. My mother gifted it to me."

Gwyn nods, studying it with approval. She does not ask more. For that, you are grateful.

You notice the books at first only because your eyes are starved for printed words. Leather spines line the shelves of her chamber. Some cracked with age, others newer, their bindings still stiff. Titles stamped in gold leaf. Pages edged in faint red or blue.

You try not to stare.

One afternoon, while braiding her hair, you let yourself glance too long at a stack near the window.

"You look at them as if they might speak," she observes.

You nearly flinch.

"I only think they're handsome things," you reply, cautious.

She tilts her head. "Can you read?"

The question lands heavier than it should. Most smallfolk cannot.

You measure your answer like you once measured incision depth. "Aye, my lady. I was fortunate. A nobleman once passed through our village. Taught a few of us letters in the evenings."

It sounds plausible.

Her brows lift slightly — not in suspicion, but mild surprise. "That is rare."

"I know," you say, lowering your eyes just enough.

There is a pause. Then, gently: "You may borrow one, if you like. I have more than I care to finish. It is expected I read them, but I confess I do not always enjoy it."

You bow your head, hiding the rush of relief and hunger. "You are most kind, my lady."

Kind does not begin to cover it. You devour them. You read in your small chamber by candlelight until wax pools dangerously close to the holder. You read in stolen moments between duties. You read as if the pages themselves might reveal a map home.

At first it is simple histories.

Dragons long dead : Balerion the Black Dread, whose shadow once swallowed cities. Vhagar. Meraxes. Names that feel mythic and yet are recorded with dates and witnesses.

You read of Aegon's Conquest : of fire made flesh, of Harrenhal melting like wax, of kingdoms bending or burning.

You read of the Dance of the Dragons, civil war tearing a dynasty apart. Brother against sister. Dragon against dragon. Skies black with ash.

Then the Blackfyre Rebellion : bastards claiming crowns, legitimacy questioned, blood spilled over lineage and pride.

And always, threading through it, the Targaryens.

Daeron II Targaryen : called the Good. The king who did not conquer Dorne with flame, but bound it through marriage. A political union that reshaped the realm more effectively than war. So it is true.

The drunken man in the tavern had not exaggerated.

You are living in the reign of a king whose name you now trace with your fingertip across parchment. You turn pages faster.

His sons, that you know with you many stores you've read already.

Baelor Targaryen. Breakspear. Widower. Warrior. Diplomat. The text praises his honor, his measured temperament, his ability to bridge divides between regions long hostile to one another.

You pause over his description longer than necessary. The other sons too, but not much is known in text, more in rumors.

Maekar Targaryen, stern, rigid, unyielding. Also widower with many children.

"His children are said to be fierce," Gwyn murmurs one afternoon as you fasten the small pearl buttons at her sleeves, her voice lowered as though the stone walls themselves might carry tales. "But they have a poor reputation as well. Mother says the eldest is oft in his cups, and the second... cruel."

She hesitates, then adds with a small shrug, "I heard he has sent one of them to the Citadel to forge a chain and become a maester. I know little of the others, though. Only whispers."

That is not written in the book. But it feels true.

You read of the coin the gods are said to flip at a Targaryen's birth, madness or greatness. As if divinity itself cannot decide what it has created. You read of the Wall in the far North, ancient and impossibly vast. Of creatures scholars dismiss with careful language, but never entirely deny.

White walkers. Giants. Things that do not fit within your old understanding of biology.

You close the book slowly. It was absurd, all of it.

The announcement comes like a thunderclap: the royal family will attend Gwyn's name day.

Even Lord Ashford looks stunned.

You overhear Lady Ashford murmuring to her companions that the Targaryens no longer soar as they once did, not without dragons. That Prince Baelor seeks closeness with lesser houses, to strengthen loyalty.

"They must remind the realm they are still flame," she says.

You polish the silver until your fingers ache and the metal gleams like still water. You work the cloth in small, patient circles, watching your distorted reflection waver in the curve of a goblet. For a moment, you barely recognize yourself — your face stretched thin by the bowl of the cup, eyes darker than you remember, older somehow.

You were not in the courtyard when Lord Ashford rode out to greet them, but you heard the trumpets. You did not see the formal bows, nor Lady Gwyn's carefully practiced curtsey, nor the way the household must have gathered in subtle clusters to witness dragon-blood stepping through their gates.

You only hear about it afterward in fragments from the stable boys.

Now you stand inside the solar, tray balanced carefully in your hands, breath measured and posture exact. The room has been prepared meticulously — rushes refreshed, fire stoked, wine decanted.

Brinna stands beside you, barely fifteen, gentle as pressed linen and twice as obedient. She clutches her own tray with white-knuckled fingers.

Then the door opens.

You feel it before you see them — the subtle shift in the air, the awareness that something important has entered the room.

Prince Baelor steps inside first.

He is broad-shouldered, yes, but not in the brutish way of men who rely solely on strength. There is composure in him. Control. The sunlight that follows through the open door catches in his dark hair — Dornish blood unmistakable in the tone of his olive skin, in the shape of his features. Truly handsome.

Behind him comes Prince Maekar.

If Baelor is tempered steel, Maekar is iron left in the forge too long — hard and severe. His jaw is set tight, his gaze sharp and restless. There is no warmth in the way he surveys the room. If anything, there is impatience.

You sense immediately that he finds this tourney tiresome. Beneath him. A duty to endure rather than enjoy.

They cross the threshold with Lord Ashford speaking between them, voice diplomatic, eager but measured.

Baelor came in front of you... and oh, he was handsome — truly, unfairly handsome.

Not in the fragile, ethereal way of the silver-haired princes sung about in taverns, but in something steadier. Baelor Targaryen entered the solar like a man accustomed to being watched and yet uninterested in the watching. Broad-shouldered, dark-haired, sun-browned by Dornish blood rather than pale Valyrian frost. Strength without ostentation, authority without noise.

His brother was the opposite in coloring if not in bearing. Hair white as bleached bone, eyes pale and sharp — the first time you saw a man like that, in your old world, you would have assumed albinism. Here, it marked him clearly: Targaryen. Or Lyseni. But no one mistook him. This was Prince Maekar : rigid, hawk-faced, coiled with restrained impatience.

And yet it was Baelor you looked at.

You were not present at the gates when Lord Ashford welcomed them. You did not see the formal bows, nor hear the words exchanged in the courtyard. But you heard later that the prince had greeted his host warmly — no arrogance, no lazy disdain. The rumors were true, then. Both that he was honorable... and that he was striking.

You met them inside, when they were shown into the solar.

Brinna, sweet and obedient Brinna, barely fifteen and already trained into quiet invisibility, carried one wine bocal. You slipped smoothly beside her and relieved her of it before she could protest. She blinked at you but said nothing. You were older; you moved with more certainty. Or perhaps more habit.

And then they entered.

Baelor first, accompanied by Lord Ashford, who spoke in a tone of careful optimism. Behind him came Maekar, tension drawn across his shoulders like a bowstring.

Maekar's eyes moved unkindly around the chamber.

He muttered curses under his breath — not the performative kind meant to shock, but the habitual sort of a man already displeased before the day has begun.

You would have snorted once, in another life. The reflex rose in your throat before you strangled it. You were not that woman here, you were a maid.

You stepped forward. Baelor's eyes found you immediately. Not in hunger like most men, or in dismissal. Simply — awareness.

You lowered yours at once and moved to help him remove his cloak, fingers careful, deferential. And then the trembling began.

This was no minor lord. This was the heir to the Iron Throne. Descendant of dragonriders. A man whose ancestors had conquered kingdoms with flame.

You had heard of him in taverns — in gossip thick with ale and envy. Breakspear. The warrior who split shields. The widower prince. The good one.

And now he stood before you, smelling of leather, steel oil, and something clean... early rain, perhaps, caught in wool.

"Spring rains have swollen many of our streams," Lord Ashford was saying gently. "Perhaps the young princess has merely been delayed."

"Fuck me," Maekar muttered flatly. "Delayed," he repeated with disdain. "They are not delayed."

Your hands faltered at one stubborn clasp near Baelor's shoulder. You dared, foolishly, to glance up. He was not looking at you, but at his brother.

Faster, you tell yourself.

"Do not curse our gracious host," Baelor said quietly.

His voice was low, and you felt it more than heard it — a faint vibration beneath your fingers where the cloak still rested against his chest.

The clasp refused you.

Your fingers fumbled. Shit, shit, shit.

His gaze shifted.

For one terrifying second you thought he would rebuke you — a mean correction, a prince's impatience. Instead, something else crossed his face. Amusement? Understanding?

He covered your hands with his. And oh... They were so calloused in a way no court-bred dandy would ever be. The hands of a man who had actually wielded a weapon rather than merely posed with one.

"I have it," he murmured, not unkindly.

You withdrew at once, stepping back as though burned, eyes dropping to the floor. He unfastened the clasp himself and lifted the cloak from his shoulders in one smooth motion, handing it to you rather than letting it fall.

"Thank you," he said.

To you. Not past you. Not through you. To you.

This should have been ordinary — once, in another life, it would not have unsettled you at all. But here, in a world where rank carved distance between souls and nobles rarely wasted gentleness on those beneath them, kindness felt almost unnatural. So rare, so unexpected, that you found yourself stunned by it.

Behind him, Maekar tore off his own cloak and let it fall carelessly to the floor.

"I said fuck me, not fuck him," he grumbled, pacing toward the window. "It is not his fault Father bade us attend this miserable circus."

Lord Ashford's smile tightened. Just barely.

You saw it, and you felt a strange flicker of protectiveness toward him. He was kind. You knew that much. He did not deserve open contempt in his own hall.

Baelor sensed it too.

"Might we discuss this another time?" he suggested, already taking a seat with deliberate calm — not commanding, not pleading, simply redirecting.

The conversation shifted, politics, appearances. The expected arrival of other nobles.

You did not hear most of it, no, you were too busy memorizing him.

Oh, damn it — why did you have to feel this sudden, traitorous heat when he was the very portrait of the realm itself? The embodiment of honor, of duty, of everything sung about in halls and whispered about in awe. It was absurd, mortifyingly predictable. A foolish, girlish cliché you would have mocked in anyone else.

And yet, you couldn't help it.

The way he leaned back but never slouched, eating his grapes. The way his attention sharpened when someone spoke. The way Maekar's agitation seemed to orbit him rather than disturb him.

And then the interruption came.

A large, awkward young knight (broad as an ox and twice as uncertain) was discovered hovering too near the doorway, clearly listening. He looked as though he regretted being born.

Ser Duncan the Tall.

He stammered something about entering the lists. About having once served a certain Ser Arlan of Pennytree. About a joust sixteen years prior.

To your astonishment, Baelor remembered.

You poured more wine as they spoke, careful not to spill a drop. Maekar rolled his eyes openly when Duncan praised Baelor's skill. But Baelor waved it away with almost embarrassed humility.

"No harm done," he told the knight. "You may enter the lists."

The gamemaster shifted uneasily, and Baelor reminded the young man he would require a sigil if he were to compete — he was not Ser Arlan's son.

You felt something twist unexpectedly in your chest. Like you, he had no banner to claim. No father to stand behind. No clear place in this world that insisted upon lineage as proof of worth.

He bowed awkwardly, nearly tripping over himself as he withdrew.

When the door closed behind him, the room felt different somehow.

You linger at the edge of the solar while the princes, the maester of the games and Lord Ashford continue their discussion of the morrow's lists — which banners will ride, which rivalries must be carefully managed, which slight from ten years past might reignite beneath the guise of sport. It is a dance of pride disguised as chivalry.

You move when needed. Refill wine, replace a cup, answer when spoken to.

"Yes, my lord." "At once, Your Grace."

Invisible, efficient, and forgettable. Yet you feel his presence in the room like a second hearth-fire.

It is well past midnight when you see him again.

Lady Gwyn had fussed longer than usual before sleep, restless with anticipation of the tourney, whispering about which knight might crown her Queen of Love and Beauty. You stayed until her breathing softened and evened, until her fingers loosened their hold on your hand.

Only then do you retreat to your small chamber.

You hesitate before putting on the dark cloak. This is foolish, you tell yourself. But the air in the castle feels too thick tonight. You need distance from polished floors and noble tempers.

The lists are quiet now, the great pavilions stand like sleeping beasts beneath the moon. You only want to walk between them. To feel something that is yours.

You step into the corridor, fastening the clasp at your throat — and walk straight into someone.

You hit something solid, and a hand grips your upper arm to steady you before you can lose balance.

"Shit — oh my God—" you breathe automatically, the old words slipping out before you can catch them.

The hand stills, and you look up.

Prince Baelor. Your heart slams so violently you're certain he must feel it through your sleeve.

You drop at once into a curtsy, mortification flushing your skin. "Forgive me, Your Grace. I did not see — I wasn't looking — "

"It is quite all right," he says, and there is no irritation in it.

He releases your arm, though his touch lingers in your awareness. His cloak is gone now; he wears only a simple dark doublet, unlaced slightly at the throat. Less princely. More man.

"And where are you going," he asks, tilting his head slightly, looking at your cloak, "at such an hour?"

The question is gentle, not accusatory. Still, you feel suddenly aware of how improper this might appear — a servant wandering alone at night.

"I wished for some air, my prince," you answer carefully. "The halls grow close after a long day."

His gaze rests on you longer than it should.

"The grounds are not entirely empty," he says. "Knights drink deeply after a day in the lists."

"I can take care of myself," you reply before you can stop yourself. Shit. Too bold. You lower your eyes quickly. "Forgive me. I only meant — I will be cautious."

A faint smile touches his mouth — not mocking. "I do not doubt you can," he says. "But caution is no insult to strength."

Silence stretches between you, you don't know what to say.

He seems kind — more than kind. A man who listens before he speaks and does not wield his rank like a cudgel. There is nothing cruel in him, nothing careless. And that, somehow, makes this worse. Because you are not merely speaking to a courteous knight.

You are speaking to the heir to the Iron Throne.

To the son of a king, to the grandson of dragonriders. To a man whose blood has ruled the Seven Kingdoms since Aegon's Conquest... In your other life, men like him existed only in books and on screens, safe behind glass and fiction.

And yet here he stands in the flickering torchlight, close enough that you can see the faint scar near his jaw, close enough to hear the cadence of his breathing. It should terrify you... and it does, a little.

"You are not from these lands," he observes suddenly.

Your breath catches.

"My prince?"

"Your speech," he clarifies. "It is careful. As though chosen."

Your thoughts scatter at once. Holy shit. You cannot afford to be examined too closely. Not by anyone — and certainly not by him. Another realization follows swiftly on the first: he is not merely honorable, nor simply kind. He is observant, attentive in ways that unsettle. The sort of man who notices small fractures in a polished surface.

That is certainly a danger to you.

You are meant to be forgettable, another quiet maid in a borrowed apron. A bowed head, a pair of hands that pour wine and vanish. You have worked diligently to smooth away the sharper edges of your old yourself — the cadence of another world, the posture of someone accustomed to being seen.

And yet here you stand, caught beneath the gaze of a prince who has already noticed too much.

"I was fortunate, growing up," you say evenly. "A nobleman once allowed me access to letters. I learned to speak properly in service."

"Fortunate indeed," he murmurs. "Few are granted such opportunity."

He studies you again — and this time it feels as though he is not looking at a maid, but at a person trying very hard to remain small.

"And yet," he continues quietly, "you do not seem small."

The words strike deeper than they should.

You swallow. "It is not my place to seem otherwise."

"For what it is worth," he says after a moment, "place and worth are not always the same thing."

You dare to meet his mismatched eyes then.

They are warmer up close than you expected. Purple and blue, flecked with gold in the torchlight.

"Thank you, Your Grace," you say softly.

He inclines his head, as though you have offered him something equal in return.

"If you must walk," he says, stepping slightly aside to allow you passage, "remain near the larger pavilions. The guards patrol there."

"I will."

You hesitate. "And if you require anything — "

He shakes his head gently. "No. But I thank you."

Another pause, the corridor feels narrower now.

"You said 'God,'" he adds suddenly.

Your stomach drops. Fuck.

"My prince?"

"When you stumbled," he says mildly. "You did not say 'gods.'"

Your thoughts tangle over themselves, searching desperately for something plausible.

"I -- I was startled," you manage at last. "An old habit."

A soft, nervous laugh slips from you, an attempt to thin whatever tension has gathered between you. It sounds too light in the narrow corridor, too fragile.

Your hands have begun trembling again — traitorous things. You hide them in the folds of your gown, fingers curling into the fabric as if you might anchor yourself there.

He watches you for a heartbeat longer. Then, unexpectedly, he lets it go. "As you say."

Relief floods you so suddenly your knees almost weaken. You incline your head, meaning to take your leave at last.

The corridor is dim, lit only by guttering torches that paint the stone in restless gold. Your slippers make scarcely a sound upon the rush-strewn floor. You have almost reached the turn when his voice rangs again.

"What is your name again?" the prince asks.

Again? As if the loss of it pricks him.

Your pulse stumbles, names are dangerous things. In this world they carry lineage, allegiance, memory. You have forged yours carefully, stitched it into the fabric of your lie until it sits comfortably on your shoulders. Even so, for a moment you consider giving him another.

But he is waiting.

His thumb rests lightly against your sleeve, warm through the wool. His gaze is searching your face in the half-light.

You hesitate for only a heartbeat. It is enough for him to notice.

A faint line appears between his brows — not anger, not suspicion, but thought. As though he senses there is more beneath your silence than shyness.

"My name, Your Grace?" you echo softly, buying time you do not possess.

"Yes," he says. "I would not forget it twice."

There is no command in the words, so you give it to him. The sound of it feels strange in your own mouth tonight.

He repeats it, lower, tasting the syllables. Not mockery. Not correction. Memory. He nods once, committing it somewhere behind those steady brown eyes.

"It suits you," he says, almost absently.

You don't know what that means. He releases your arm then, though slowly, as if reluctant to surrender the contact.

"Good night," he says at last.

The corridor seems smaller somehow.

"Good night, Your Grace."

You curtsy again, deeper this time. When you rise, his gaze has not left you. You step past him, acutely aware of his proximity — the warmth, the faint scent of leather and steel that clings to him.

You walk steadily until you turn the corner. Only then do you press your hand to your chest.

Oh, this is dangerous.

You were present in the solar whenPrince Aerion made his declaration.

The chamber felt smaller that day, though the great carved beams and high windows had not shifted an inch. Lord Ashford sat at the head of the heavy wooden table carved with his house's sunburst crest. Beside him, stern and watchful, was his liege lord from the house of Tyrell. The king's sons occupied the opposite side — Prince Baelor composed, Prince Maekar tight-jawed.

Ser Duncan the Tall stood before them, flanked by royal guards, looking as though he had wandered into a tale far larger than himself. When the knight requested trial by combat, Aerion refused. He sat half-sprawled in his chair, a dagger in hand, cracking nuts against the tabletop with idle flicks of the blade. Shells scattered like splinters around his plate. His pale hair caught the light; his eyes did not.

"A trial of seven," he announced, as if suggesting a change in weather.

It was excess, spectacle even! It was cruelty wrapped in ceremony.

You felt the shift in the room — the tightening of jaws, the quick exchange of glances. A trial of seven meant blood would not be contained to two men. It would draw others in. Escalate pride into ruin. You moved quietly around the table, pouring wine into cups that did not need refilling. Your hands were steady by habit now. Your face carefully blank.

But inside, something twisted.

You pitied Ser Duncan. You had already pitied him long before this moment.

You had taken him food in the dungeons when no one was looking — crusts of bread, a heel of cheese, whatever you could slip past the guards under the pretense of cleaning. You should not have done it. It was not your place, but he had looked so bewildered in his chains, so alone.

And you had been there the day Aerion snapped the puppeteer girl's fingers.

The memory still made your stomach turn.

The girl had been part of a troupe traveling through the grounds, performing an old tale with painted wooden figures. You did not understand at first what had angered the prince so deeply. The maids whispered that the puppets had mocked the three-headed dragon, that the story made light of Targaryen power. That was why he had seized the girl's hand and bent her fingers back until they broke.

But in the kitchens, the cook had cut those whispers short.

"Fool talk," he had said slamming a cleaver into bone. "That tale is older than the dragons in this land. Older than their crowns. The prince needed no insult to do what he did. Some men are just born cruel."

Mad, others murmured later.

You did not know if it was madness, you only knew the sound the girl made.

And now here he was again, cracking nuts with his dagger, demanding seven men bleed for his pride, while Ser Duncan stood alone beneath banners that did not belong to him.

You poured more wine, and wondered how many more bones would break before this tourney was done.

When Ser Duncan was taken below (beneath the stone belly of Ashford Castle where the air turns damp and smells of iron and old straw) you told yourself it was none of your affair.

You lasted less than an hour.

Bread and cheese are easy enough to pocket if one knows when the kitchens are busiest. A heel gone missing raises fewer questions than a loaf. Water, easier still. You wrapped both in cloth and made your way down the narrow steps, heart hammering with every echo of your own footfall.

He could not have been more than nineteen, you thought when you saw him properly in the torchlight. Broad as an ox, yes. Calloused hands, yes... but young. Startlingly young when stripped of armor and pride.

He looked up when you approached the bars, confusion first — then recognition.

"You," he said, too loudly.

"Quiet," you hissed at once, glancing over your shoulder. "Do you want us both dead?"

That silenced him.

You passed the bread through the gap and the cup of water after. His fingers brushed yours, rough and shaking.

"You shouldn't — " he began.

"I know."

It was dangerous. Perhaps even treasonous, depending on how one wished to frame it. You had seen men hanged for less — for theft, for insolence, for merely being inconvenient to someone with power. A maid consorting with a prisoner accused of striking a prince? That rope would not hesitate.

Still, you could not unsee the puppeteer girl's broken fingers. You could not forget the sound.

"This does not leave this cell," you told him firmly. "You do not speak of me. If anyone asks, you found it on the floor. Understood?"

He nodded quickly. "I won't tell. I swear it."

He thanked you more times than necessary. You cut him off each time.

"Eat," you said. "You'll need your strength."

You did not stay long, could not afford to.

And so that night, they brought him back to the solar.

You stood once more with the wine pitcher in hand as the great men of the realm resumed their seats.

Prince Aerion Targaryen lounged in his chair as though none of this concerned him. His lip was still split where Duncan had struck him; dried blood traced the edge of his mouth.

He cracked nuts against the table again with the flat of his dagger. Again. Again.

The sharp report echoed in the chamber. If it pained him, he did not show it. If anything, the blood only sharpened his delight.

Prince Maekar looked as though he wished the stone floor would open and swallow him whole. Lord Ashford and Lord Tyrell shared a glance — discomfort poorly disguised as diplomacy.

Prince Baelor, meanwhile, might have been carved from marble, but you saw it.

The tightening at his jaw when you poured his wine. The faint flex of muscle beneath stillness. He did not speak out of turn, did not even interrupt.

When Aerion refused single combat and declared he would have a trial of seven, the air itself seemed to recoil, even Prince Baelor and Maekar stiffened, well Maekar was more confusing having never heard of a trial of seven.

Baelor was the one who explained the custom : seven champions for the accused. Seven for the accuser. Judgment decided by blood and survival.

As he spoke, you watched Ser Duncan's face, you watched the light leave it.

Six other knights? He was a hedge knight — no house, no banner of note, no father's name to rally behind him. Large and awkward and earnest, a man who could barely afford decent armor. And now he was expected to find six others willing to stake their lives on his cause.

It was absurd! Cruel, even.

Your knuckles whitened around the neck of the wine pitcher before you realized how tightly you were gripping it, you couldn't help it.

The doctor in you (the part that once swore oaths about preserving life) recoiled at the spectacle of it. But even beyond that, simply the human in you balked. You caught Duncan's eye for a fleeting second.

He looked as though the ground had vanished beneath him.

Prince Maekar seized his son by the arm and all but dragged him from the chamber, annoyance radiating from him like heat from forge iron.

When the door shut behind them, the room felt drained.

Ser Duncan asked to be dismissed so he might seek his champions, voice lacking conviction. Already he sounded defeated.

Prince Baelor did not even look at him fully — only gave a curt tilt of the head.

Dismissed.

And just like that, the fate of a nineteen-year-old hedge knight was set loose into the night, expected to gather six men willing to bleed for him.

Soon enough, Lord Ashford withdrew with stiff courtesy, and Lord Tyrell followed, murmuring something about the hour and the morrow's arrangements. Their footsteps faded down the corridor, their voices swallowed by stone.

The fire had burned low, embers pulsing red and gold beneath settling ash. Shadows stretched long across the carved table bearing Ashford's crest. The air smelled faintly of smoke and spilled wine.

Prince Baelor did not leave.

He remained seated for a time, then rose and turned toward the hearth, hands clasped loosely behind his back. His posture was straight, but no longer ceremonial. Thoughtful now, almost burdened.

You were still there... Not dismissed.

The wine pitcher rested in your hands, heavier than it should have been. You did not dare set it down without instruction. Etiquette was clear: a servant speaks only when addressed. A servant does not intrude upon noble contemplation.

So you lowered your gaze and waited.

It startled you when he spoke.

"Were you present," he asked without turning, "during the... incident?"

You blinked, uncertain.

"My prince?"

He shifted slightly, glancing at you over his shoulder. The firelight traced the line of his cheek, softened the severity of his profile.

"You walk the grounds at night," he said evenly. "You said so. I thought perhaps you might have seen what occurred."

Understanding dawned slowly.

"Yes," you answered carefully. "I was there."

Silence lingered a moment.

"And," he continued, now facing you fully, "do you believe it just?"

The question struck you harder than any reprimand might have. You hesitated.

"May I speak freely, Your Grace?" you asked, pulse quickening.

A faint flicker of something (amusement, perhaps) touched his mouth. "You are already doing so."

You swallowed.

"I think it unjust," you said at last. "Your nephew was... out of line." You chose the phrase carefully, but the truth pressed harder behind it.

"It was cruelty," you added, more firmly than intended.

His jaw tightened.

"He was struck," Baelor replied. "Ser Duncan laid hands upon a grandson of the king."

"And breaking a girl's fingers shows strength?" you answered before caution could catch you.

The words came sharper than they should have. Too quick and honest.

You realized only then that your speech had shifted — less careful, less polished. Something of your other self slipping through.

You steadied your tone. "If I may, my prince... if such acts are meant to remind smallfolk of royal authority, they do not succeed."

His brows lifted slightly.

"How so?"

You set the wine pitcher down on the table, your hands suddenly free, folding them behind your back to still their trembling.

"I am smallfolk," you said plainly. "People talk. In kitchens, in stables, in the yards." You met his eyes now. "They have not spoken kindly of House Targaryen since that day."

He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down his face — a gesture so weary, so human, it startled you. For a moment he did not look like the heir to a throne forged in dragonfire. He looked like a man carrying the weight of other men's sins.

The firelight caught in his eyes — one warm blue, the other purple, almost amber in certain angles. They fixed on you with unsettling intensity.

"You presume much," he said quietly.

"I report what I hear," you replied. "Fear is not loyalty... and well, cruelty does not inspire devotion. It inspires resentment."

He did not rebuke you.Instead, he looked... tired.

"I know," he admitted at last, voice low. "What my nephew did was not noble." A pause. "But I cannot publicly condemn him. He is my blood."

There it was. The line drawn not by morality, but by lineage.

He turned slightly away again, staring into the fire.

"I am a son of the dragon," he continued. "And dragons do not devour their own before the realm."

The statement was not prideful. It was resigned.

You felt something twist in your chest.

"And what of the realm?" you asked softly.

He did not answer immediately.

The embers shifted, a log collapsed inward with a quiet hiss.

When he looked back at you, there was something rawer in his expression now — something less princely.

"The realm," he said, "is rarely as simple as right and wrong."

You did not answer.

The fire shifted between you, collapsing inward with a soft sigh of sparks. You thought the conversation had ended there — that he would dismiss you, retreat back behind the careful walls of diplomacy and blood.

Instead, he turned fully toward you. "If you stood in my place," he asked, voice quieter now, stripped of ceremony, "what would you do?"

The question unsettled you more than any rebuke could have.

"My prince — "

"If you wore my name. My burden. What would you have done?"

You hesitated only briefly.

"I would have taught my nephew a lesson or two," you said lightly, attempting humor to soften the boldness.

His mouth twitched — barely. A faint distortion at the corner of his lips. Not quite a smile, but close enough to prove he understood.

Then you grew serious. "And I would have helped the knight," you added. "If not publicly, then quietly. Found men willing to stand beside him."

He interrupted you before you could continue. "And would you have stood beside him yourself?"

You blinked.

"If I were a man?" you asked.

"Yes."

"Then yes," you said without hesitation. "I would."

The answer surprised neither of you.

"And now?" he pressed.

You huffed softly. "Now they would not allow it. I lack the proper anatomy for their chivalry."

A startled sound escaped him — softer than laughter, but real.

He tilted his head slightly. "If you were in my place."

You stared at him as though he had sprouted a second head.

"Are you mad?" you blurted before you could stop yourself, finally realizing what he meant. Horror struck you a heartbeat later. You clapped a hand over your own mouth.

"My prince — forgive me — I did not mean—"

He shook his head, dismissing the apology. "I asked for honesty."

You lowered your hand slowly.

"If I were in your place," you said more carefully, "I would be furious. At my nephew, at the position... the choice between blood and justice."

His gaze sharpened.

"And what would you choose?"

You studied him now, truly studied him — the weight in his shoulders, the tension that had not left him since Aerion's declaration.

"You are contemplating it," you said quietly, finally putting the piece one by one. He wanted to side with Duncan, be one of his knights.

He did not deny it.

"The thought has crossed my mind," he admitted. "More than once."

"To stand for Ser Duncan?"

"Yes..." A pause. "The more I turn it over," he continued, "the more it seems the thing to do. The honorable thing."

The firelight flickered across his face, illuminating the conflict there : duty to blood, duty to justice, duty to the realm. You felt a chill that had nothing to do with the hour.

"My prince," you said carefully, "you are the heir to the Iron Throne."

"I am aware."

"It is dangerous."

"All things worth doing are."

You stepped closer without realizing it, lowering your voice instinctively though no one else remained in the chamber.

"I have seen the lists these past days," you said. "The broken bones. The blood in the sand. A trial of seven will not be sport. It will be slaughter."

He did not flinch. "I know."

"You are not some wandering knight with nothing to lose," you pressed. "You carry a kingdom's future on your shoulders."

"And what is that future worth," he asked quietly, "if it cannot defend what is just?"

The question struck deep. You searched for an answer and found none that did not wound.

"I agree with you," you admitted softly. "It would be right." A pause. "But right does not mean safe."

A faint breath escaped him... almost a laugh, though without humor.

"You sound as though you would rather I remain behind the walls."

"I would rather you live," you replied before you could temper it.

His eyes held yours — long, searching.

"My mind is not yet settled," he said at last. "But it leans."

You felt it then, the terrible clarity of who he was : a man who would bleed for principle.

When Baelor rides onto the field to stand in defense of his nephew, a coldness settles along your spine so sharply it feels almost like a blade laid flat against bone.

You are positioned beneath the striped awnings of the noble pavilion, tasked with overseeing the trays and flagons as servants circulate among silk-clad lords and jeweled ladies. From this slight elevation, the lists stretch wide and merciless beneath the sun — churned earth already darkened in places where blood has soaked into it.

He has made his decision, and did not tell you.

After your conversation by the hearth, he dismissed you with measured courtesy, and that was the end of it. No hint, or promise. And now he is there.

Armor gleaming, lance lowered. The heir to the Iron Throne riding into what can only be called sanctioned slaughter.

Knights colliding in splintering bursts of wood and steel. Horses screaming. Men dragged from saddles only to rise again in mud and fury. What began as ceremony has dissolved into something far more primitive — not sport, not honor, but survival.

Your hands move mechanically, pouring wine into waiting cups, replenishing platters as though this were any other spectacle. The nobles murmur, gasp, applaud. They lean forward eagerly when a helm cracks, when a body falls.

Your gaze, however, does not wander. It remains fixed upon him, upon Baelor.

You must be a fool to even entertain the thought... You remind yourself of that often enough : you're a peasant. This isn't some ridiculous courtly romance or traveling play where a prince falls in love with a nobody and defies the realm for her. This is a medieval kingdom, titles matter. Blood matters. Marriage is not a game whispered about behind silk curtains.

Here, girls of sixteen are handed off like treaties, sealed with vows instead of ink. Gwin told you that herself, her tone practical and unsurprised. There is no room for fantasy in a world like this.

And yet...

You just can't help it. For the first time since arriving in this cursed place, you feel something stir in your chest, something reckless and alive. Of all the souls in this brutal court, of all the men you might have looked at and forgotten, you had to be attracted to him. The heir to the Iron Throne.

You watch him fight with a precision that borders on restraint. He does not rage. He does not posture. He moves with economy, shield raised, strikes measured ... not wasteful, not cruel. A man fighting because he has chosen to, not because he delights in it.

Across the chaos, you glimpse Aerion locked in vicious struggle with Ser Duncan, their movements frantic and uneven, pride driving them harder than skill.

And then — you see it.

Prince Maekar, composure shattered, drives forward in raw desperation. He calls out to his son — not as a prince commanding troops, but as a father terrified of losing his child. The sound of it carries even through the din.

Your breath catches.

Maekar does not strike gently.

The mace arcs through sunlight — a brutal, heavy sweep meant to clear space, meant to defend his son. It connects, the sound is sickening through the cheers. Baelor falls.

You gasp aloud before you can stop yourself.

A nearby lord turns toward you, goblet extended expectantly for more wine. His brows lift in mild irritation at your lapse. You murmur an apology and complete the pour, though you scarcely see the liquid entering the cup.

Your eyes are already back on the field.

He is not rising, you know that kind of blow.

You have seen concussions before. Skull fractures, the subtle stillness that follows when the brain has been shaken within its cage too violently.

At best, you think wildly, at best he is merely stunned.

At worst — the field dissolves into chaos. Trumpets blare, dust rises in thick choking clouds as men shout and converge. Somewhere amid the tumult, Aerion is forced to withdraw his accusation against Ser Duncan, the words wrenched from him more by circumstance than humility.

The trial is declared ended.

You are ordered beneath the stands at once, sent running with water and cloth for the wounded being dragged out of the blazing sun.

Under the pavilion, it is another world entirely.

The roar of the crowd fades into something muffled and distant. Here there is only blood, sweat, and the low, broken sounds of men trying not to scream.

As you hurry forward with a bucket sloshing against your skirts, one thought pounds through your skull with dreadful certainty:

You knew this would happen.

You spot the young prince (Egg? Aegon?) hovering wide-eyed as Ser Duncan is lowered onto a bench by two men. The giant looks half-dead already, armor torn away, his body a ruin of bruises and blood. And yet he still has the strength to groan, to speak.

Your instinct is immediate and violent: go to him. Help him, you idiot.

But you freeze, and remind yourself miserably once again : you are a maid. Not a surgeon who fell through time into some brutal, backward century.

"You shouldn't be here," you say gently to the small bald boy as you approach with the water.

"I'm his squire," Egg replies defensively, his high voice tight, small hands clenched into fists.

You sigh softly.

"The others..." Dunk groans, his voice rough as gravel. "Has anyone died?"

He looks toward Raymun Fossoway — the newly knighted one, bruised and battered himself, though not nearly as broken as Dunk.

"Beesbury," Raymun answers quietly, kneeling before him. "In the first charge."

Your eyes return to Dunk's side, and your stomach twists.

Steely Pate, the camp armorer, is bent over him, thick, unwashed fingers pressing into the torn flesh where the lance struck. You wince. The rings of mail have been driven into the wound.

"Gods be good," Raymun murmurs as he watches. "The lance points drove the rings deep into his flesh."

You shift the weight of the bucket on your hip, helpless, horrified. Every instinct in you is screaming.

"One moment I feel drunk," Dunk mutters through clenched teeth. "The next like I'm dying."

And that is when you snap.

"Stop touching him like that," you say sharply to Steely Pate.

All three men look at you.

Egg stares at you as though you have grown another head.

"It'll worsen the wound," you continue, forcing your voice steady. "He could die of infection."

"And what would a maid know of such matters?" Raymun asks, suspicion flickering in his eyes.

You bite back the urge to roll yours. To tell them you have spent years in operating rooms, that you have held a beating heart and a brain in your hands. That you have studied anatomy in sterile halls with lights brighter than the sun.

Because here, that would make you a witch.

"Because — " you begin.

But Steely Pate cuts you off with a dismissive shake of his head. "We'll get him drunk," he mutters, turning back to Dunk. "Then we'll pour boiling oil into it. That's how the maesters do it."

Boiling oil.

Your mind reels. You've heard of maesters — scholars, healers, teachers bound in chains of knowledge. There was one at Ashford Castle, you remember. There is always one, no matter how small the house.

And this is what they do?

You have kept your silence since arriving in this cursed place. When Clare complained of her back, when Gwin spoke of stomach pains or fevers spreading through the camp, you swallowed the truth. You never explained bacteria, never spoke of internal bleeding or organ failure. You were careful, too much knowledge would damn you.

Better a silent maid than a burned witch.

But this — this is too much.

You look at Dunk's ashen face. At the dirt grinding deeper into open flesh, the hands that will kill him in the name of healing. And for the first time since you arrived in this brutal world, you decide silence is no longer an option.

You are drawing breath to argue (to insist, to overstep your place yet again) when the murmur beneath the pavilion shifts and parts for another figure entering from the glare of the lists. The armor is unmistakable even through dust and shadow: blackened steel chased with the three-headed dragon. Not one of the lesser sons, not a hedge knight aping glory.

Royalty.

For half a heartbeat you fear it is Maekar, hard as the blow he delivered.But then the knight speaks.

"Wine. Not oil." The voice settles the question at once. Prince Baelor.

You feel something dangerously close to disbelief unfurl inside your chest. You saw the strike land. You saw the unnatural snap of his helm beneath the force of it. You saw the way his body absorbed the violence of that impact. No one walks away from that without consequence. No one.

Yet here he stands — though "stands" is generous. The sword he drives point-first into the ground is not ceremonial; it is structural. His weight leans subtly, almost imperceptibly, into the hilt as though the steel were an extension of his spine.

"Oil will kill him," Baelor continues.

The irony does not escape you.

He surveys the scene with concentration : Dunk pale and bloodied, Egg hovering stricken and stubborn, Raymun kneeling, Steely Pate bristling — and at last his gaze settles on you, absurdly still clutching your basin like a talisman of competence in a world that refuses it.

"I will send Maester Yormwell to see to him," he says, turning slightly toward the archway where the haze of churned earth still drifts. "When he has finished tending my brother."

There is that unmistakable affection of brothers when he speaks of him.

Behind you, Dunk groans, a fractured sound dragged up from somewhere deep.

You should remain silent, you should bow and withdraw into invisibility.

Instead, professional reflex overrides social survival. "And who is tending you, Your Grace?" you ask, the words emerging before caution can restrain them. "I saw the blow you received — it needs tending."

The pavilion stills, and fuck.

Baelor turns with slowness, the cracked visor obscures most of his face, yet something in the angle of his head suggests mild amusement (or perhaps curiosity) that a maid would dare such familiarity.

Before he can respond, Dunk drags himself from the bench, refusing dignity in favor of loyalty. With assistance, he forces his battered body upright enough to kneel.

"Your Grace," he rasps, voice raw with devotion. "I am your man. Please. Your man."

The plea is not political, it is profoundly personal. Baelor lowers a gloved hand to Dunk's shoulder in benediction.

"I need good men, Ser Duncan," he replies.

The cadence is wrong... not the vocabulary, but the delivery.

There is a thickness to his speech now, a subtle distortion as though the musculature of his tongue is laboring against invisible resistance. The vowels blur at their edges, consonants lack precision.

He reaches to touch Dunk's head with almost paternal gravity. "The realm — "

The sentence fractures, his posture wavers. Not dramatically or theatrically, but undeniably.

You do not think; you react. The basin slips from your grasp and strikes the ground, water spilling uselessly across trampled earth as you move to steady him. Your hands close around his left arm — solid beneath the armor yet strangely unreliable in its resistance.

"Your Grace," you murmur, lowering your voice so that it does not carry accusation, "you require a maester."

"Nonsense," he answers, but the word arrives softened at the margins.

His eyes attempt to focus on yours. They blink with effort, the tracking is delayed, as though his mind is negotiating distance through fog.

Behind you, Dunk is guided back to the bench.

Baelor remains upright only because the sword bears a portion of his weight.

"Ser Raymun... my helm... if you would be so kind."

Your stomach contracts... lucid interval. Posterior cranial impact. Delayed neurological compromise.

Your mind arranges the data with merciless efficiency. The initial trauma did not incapacitate him. He rose, he spoke, he functioned. A deceptive stability. Now — minutes later — the decline announces itself in subtle neurological deficits: slurred articulation, impaired fine motor control, disequilibrium.

"Visor's cracked," Baelor adds faintly, his gauntleted fingers fumbling at the damaged metal. "My fingers feel... like wood."

Paresthesia.

Raymun steps behind him at once, calling to Steely Plate. "Good man, I need a hand."

Your thoughts accelerate into clinical clarity. The helm was tightly fitted; minimal interior space, rigid containment. The impact likely produced a depressed or linear skull fracture along the occipital region. The cerebellum could be compromised; his unsteadiness suggests involvement of coordination pathways. Swelling has begun — inevitably. Intracranial pressure rising within a confined vault.

The helmet, ironically, is performing an external tamponade. The metal encasement is stabilizing the fracture, maintaining uniform compression. It is preventing displacement.

If they remove it abruptly, they risk destabilizing the fragmented bone. They risk altering the pressure gradient catastrophically. If there is an epidural bleed (and the lucid interval strongly suggests it) then what is contained may suddenly expand without counterforce.

A rapid shift, herniation and then immediate collapse.

Raymun's hands find the clasps.

You tighten your hold on Baelor's arm, feeling the tremor beginning there, subtle but undeniable.

And you know, with dreadful certainty, that the next few seconds will determine whether the heir to the Iron Throne remains a living man, or becomes a cautionary memory whispered.

Steely Pate continues speaking (something about the steel having been driven inward, about how the metal was crushed and forced against bone) but the words dissolve before they reach you. They sound distant, muffled, as if you are hearing them from underwater.

"My brother's mace, most likely," Baelor murmurs faintly. He tilts his head toward you, and even through the warped visor you see it — that faint, crooked smile. "He's strong."

There is affection there, no bitterness, not even anger. Only the warmth of an elder brother remembering boyhood scuffles in sunlit courtyards instead of mortal blows on a battlefield. The tenderness of it nearly shatters you.

You see it clearly now — this is the lucid interval.

He is speaking, standing, and even smiling. And he is dying.

"Don't." The word leaves you before fear can cage it. It is not timid. It carries command — a tone entirely unsuited to a servant wrapped in dull grey and faded orange.

The men turn toward you in unison.

Baelor's eyes shift last. They snap toward you with effort, struggling to focus. They are unfixed, glassy, fighting to remain present.

You take a step forward, the pitcher hanging useless at your side.

"Do not remove the helm," you say again, slower this time, forcing each syllable to land with intention.

Ser Raymun exhales through his nose. "And what would a maid know of such matters?"

His tone is not merely irritated — it is offended. The natural order of the world has tilted, a servant is instructing knights.

Four pairs of eyes are on you now. You feel your pulse in your throat, in your temples.

But you do not retreat.

"If you remove it without preparation," you say carefully, "you may cause a sudden and fatal worsening of his condition."

The terminology means nothing to them — you see it plainly in their faces.

So you shift, forcing your knowledge into language they might grasp.

"The blow he took did not simply dent steel. It struck bone. The helm is holding what was broken in place. If you lift it carelessly, without keeping his head completely still, you may worsen the injury beyond repair."

They stare at you as if you have begun reciting incantations.

You step closer to Baelor now, ignoring the invisible line you should not cross.

"If you remove it," you continue, your voice tightening with urgency, "the pressure inside his skull will change. Whatever balance is holding will be lost."

"A maid. What would you know of skulls and pressure?" Raymun rebukes again, more agitated now.

And that is when something inside you tears loose.

"Shut the fuck up and listen to me, will you!" The curse cracks through the pavilion like a whip, and the silence that follows is immense.

You have just sworn at a knight of noble birth.... You know the weight of that, you know the danger, and yet, you don't care.

"He's in danger," you continue, voice no longer trembling but burning. "You remove his helmet without stabilizing his head, and the very thing keeping him alive may fail. The force that struck him likely fractured the back of his skull. The steel is compressing it! It is keeping the fragments aligned. It is containing the swelling."

Blank incomprehension flickers across their faces, but they understand the tone.

"You pull it away too quickly," you press on, desperate now, "and whatever is contained inside will not remain contained. Would you prefer his brain spilled into the dirt beneath your boots?"

The brutality of the image lands, you see it in the way Raymun's jaw tightens and eyes widen.

Baelor is staring at you in a strange, distant way.

"Let ... " he says softly. Your name is uneven on his tongue.

You step closer and take his arm more firmly as he sways.

"Do not speak," you murmur to him, lowering your voice just for him. "Save your strength."

His weight shifts against you more heavily now. The subtle tremor in his stance is worsening. His fingers, once steady on his sword, twitch faintly as though the signals between mind and muscle are faltering.

He tries to straighten, tries to maintain dignity, but you feel it — the gradual loss of coordination.

Raymun hesitates behind him, Steely Pate hesitates too. The unthinkable has happened: they are pausing because a servant girl has told them to.

Baelor exhales slowly. The sound is not quite right — slightly uneven.

You can see the signs accumulating now with horrifying clarity, and you know what comes next.

And you do not know how to stop it in a world without surgeons, without imaging, without sterile instruments or drills to relieve the pressure building inside a prince's head.

All you have is your voice, and the terrible knowledge that time is almost gone.

Then Baelor's knees buckle. The change is subtle at first (a deeper sway, his grip loosening on the sword ) and then his weight collapses fully into you.

"Your Grace — !"

You barely keep him upright.

His head lolls slightly inside the damaged helm, his eyes are no longer focusing.

"Lay him down," you order sharply, the authority in your tone no longer accidental but deliberate. "Flat, and carefully. Keep his head completely still."

They hesitate again — not out of defiance now, but uncertainty.

You twist toward a passing maid frozen near the pavilion entrance.

"You — find something rigid. A door plank, a table board, anything long and solid. Now. And clear a path back to the castle. He needs to be moved immediately."

She stares at you, wide-eyed.

"Go!" you snap.

She runs.

Raymun steps closer, agitation bleeding into his voice. "We cannot simply rush the Hand of the King about like a sack of grain—"

You round on him, fury blazing hot and clean.

"The heir to the Iron Throne and the Hand of the King are in our hands," you say, each word sharp as a blade. "If you do not wish to watch him die beneath this tent, then you will either listen to me or you will step aside — and if he dies because you chose pride over sense, that will be on you."

The pavilion goes still.

Raymun's jaw flexes, but he does not argue again.

Baelor is sagging now, barely conscious. A low murmur spills from his lips — broken fragments.

"Sons... the realm..." The words drift apart, unfinished.

"Do not let his head move," you instruct Steely Pate. "Not even a finger's width."

The maid returns at last, breathless, dragging a long, solid plank of wood — likely torn from a supply table. It will have to do.

"Good," you say, already kneeling. "Slide it beside him."

You lower Baelor carefully to the ground, supporting the base of his skull through the helm so that no rotation occurs. Every motion is slow, controlled. You guide the men with your hands.

"On my count," you say, breathing rapidly. "We lift together... keep his body aligned with his head. Do not twist him."

They obey. One, two, three. They raise him just enough for you to slide the plank beneath. You lay him flat atop it, adjusting his shoulders and hips so his spine remains straight.

He is no longer responding.

"Baelor," you say firmly, leaning close. "Your Grace, can you hear me?"

No answer.

You press two fingers carefully at his neck beneath the jawline, searching. There, a pulse. Still present, still alive! Strong, but slightly irregular.

"He still has a pulse," you say, more to steady yourself than them. "We move now."

Steely Pate takes one end of the wooden plank without another word, his large hands surprisingly steady despite the blood still drying on his knuckles. You move to the other end immediately, not allowing yourself a moment to think about the impropriety of it — a servant lifting a prince — nor about the tremor running through your arms.

Raymun positions himself near the prince's head, both hands hovering awkwardly near the damaged helm as if afraid even his breath might shift it. Egg stands frozen for a second longer, his wide violet eyes glossy with tears, staring at his uncle's slackened form as though the world has tilted irreparably.

But you need him.

He is the only one whose word will open gates and doors.

"Slowly," you instruct Steely Pate firmly. "No sudden movements. Keep him completely level." Then, without breaking stride, you turn your head toward Raymun and the cluster of maids hovering uselessly nearby. "Find a maester for Ser Duncan. Now. Do not let them pour oil into that wound."

Your voice does not waver.

"Prince Aegon," you call urgently, your breath already tight from the strain of holding the stretcher. "I need your assistance."

The boy startles as if pulled from a dream. He looks once toward Dunk (who, pale and sweating, nods faintly at him) and then Egg runs to your side, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve.

They begin moving.

The path back to the castle forces you between the lists, where the dust of combat still lingers thick in the air. Nobles remain perched upon the stands, some standing now, craning their necks to see which knights still rise and which do not. Wounded men groan in the dirt. The festive banners flutter obscenely bright above a field that smells of iron and churned mud.

Ahead, you glimpse Prince Maekar kneeling in the mud beside his fallen son, helmet cast aside. A maester bends over the young man, murmuring urgently. Maekar looks up at the commotion — sees the dragon on the battered armor you carry — sees Egg running alongside you — and something primal and terrified tears from his throat.

"What is happening?" he shouts, rising to his feet.

No one answers. You do not answer.. There is no time to soothe a father while the Hand of the King's breathing grows shallower with every step.

The castle looms closer. The guards at the gate lower their halberds automatically when they see a group of servants rushing forward with a plank of wood. Their expressions harden.

"Halt — "

"Move!" Egg snaps, his voice breaking but carrying unmistakable authority. "That is Prince Baelor!"

The guards hesitate only a fraction of a second —(ong enough to see the dragon sigil, long enough to register the blood) and then they step aside.

You do not slow.

"Faster," you urge under your breath, though every instinct warns you that speed risks jostling the injury further. "We need a chamber. Clean linens. Boiled water. Vinegar, if they have it. And someone send for Maester Yormwell immediately."

You turn to Egg as you cross the threshold into the stone corridors of the castle. "Where is his chamber?"

He swallows hard and points. "Up the east stair — the second tower room."

"Show us."

The stairwell feels impossibly narrow as you ascend, each step measured and agonizing. Baelor's head shifts slightly despite Raymun's careful hands, and you feel your stomach clench at the motion.

He makes no sound now, not even the broken murmurs of before.

When you finally reach the chamber, you push through the door without ceremony. The room is large, tapestries drawn back to let in the afternoon light, a heavy carved bed dominating the center.

"Clear it," you order.

Servants scramble to strip the bed of decorative cushions and furs. Raymun and Steely Pate lift the plank carefully and transfer Baelor onto the mattress at your direction, keeping his spine aligned as best they can manage.

"Do not remove the helm," you remind them sharply.

They step back, breathing hard.

You turn to Egg, who stands pale and shaking near the foot of the bed.

"I need you to fetch the maester," you tell him firmly. "Tell him this cannot wait. And bring anyone he trusts to assist him. Go."

The boy nods and runs. You face Raymun and Steely Pate next.

"Find the largest basins you can," you instruct. "Fill them with water. Have it boiled. Bring clean cloths. As clean as you can manage. Quickly."

They exchange a look — uncertain still, but no longer arguing — and then they move.

For the first time since the pavilion, you are alone beside him, you step to the head of the bed and kneel.

Carefully, gently, you slide your fingers once more to his neck.

The pulse is still there, fainter now. You watch his chest.

You place your palm lightly against the damaged helm, stabilizing it without shifting it.

"Stay with me," you murmur under your breath, though you do not know whether you are speaking to him or to yourself.

Because now comes the part where knowledge alone may not be enough. And you are about to attempt to save a prince in a century that does not yet know how to save him.

You stand at the head of the bed, both hands braced against the warped helm, and for the first time since the chaos began there is no one giving orders but you.

The chamber smells of dust and old stone. Light spills across red-and-black tapestries, across carved furniture, across a prince who may die within the hour if you miscalculate.

You force yourself to breathe slowly. You do not have a drill. You do not have sterile instruments. You do not have imaging, suction, cautery, clamps.

You're fucked, but hopeful.

You have metal bent inward against fractured bone — and a skull that is likely cracked along the occipital line. The helm is compressing the fragments, preventing displacement. It is also containing swelling. But it is unstable containment. If removed without counter-pressure, the fracture may separate, the swelling may surge outward, and the delicate structures at the base of the brain (brainstem, cerebellum) may shift catastrophically.

You cannot simply pull it off... but you cannot leave it on forever either.

His pulse flutters beneath your fingers, he's warm, too warm even.

The door bursts open.

Maester Yormwell enters with two younger acolytes trailing him, chains clinking softly against his chest. He takes in the scene at once — you at the head of the bed, the dragon-helmed prince motionless, Raymun hovering like a sentinel.

"What madness is this?" the maester demands. "Why has the helm not been removed?"

"Because if you remove it carelessly, he will die," you answer without looking at him.

Silence follows.

You finally lift your gaze. "I need bandages. Thick linen. As many rolls as you have. Leather straps. Vinegar and Wine. And something small and sharp enough to cut metal ties, not pry the helm open."

One of the acolytes scoffs. "It is our place to tend him."

You do not raise your voice.

"If you remove that helm without stabilizing his skull externally, the fractured bone will shift. The swelling inside will worsen. He will stop breathing, and you will call it the will of the gods. I will call it preventable."

The maester narrows his eyes at you. "And how would you know this?"

Because I have seen it before, because I have watched patients talk and smile and then collapse from epidural hematomas, because I know the pattern.

Instead you say, "The blow was to the back of the head. He walked. He spoke. Now he fades. That is not chance. That is injury progressing beneath containment."

One of the acolytes whispers, "She speaks like a witch."

You turn your head slowly toward him.

"It's not witchcraft, you imbecile" you say evenly. "It is knowledge, science! And if you would rather let the Hand of the King die than listen to a woman, then stand aside and watch."

That lands.

Yormwell studies Baelor's breathing. The irregular pulse, the cracked visor, the blood under the helm now staining the bed.

"What do you propose?" he asks finally.

You exhale once. "We do not pull the helm upward. We cut it away in sections. Slowly. While maintaining external pressure around the skull."

You move your hands to demonstrate.

"We wrap his head first. Tight bandaging around the helm itself to keep the metal from springing outward suddenly. Then we cut the side straps and hinges piece by piece. As the metal loosens, we replace its support with firm wrapping."

The maester's brows draw together. He understands enough anatomy to follow.

"You intend to create an outer casing of cloth," he says slowly.

"Yes."

"And if the bone beneath is shattered?"

"Then the cloth becomes the brace."

One of the acolytes shifts uneasily. "And if she is wrong?"

You meet his gaze steadily. "Then he dies here instead of later."

No one speaks after that.

"Bring the linen," Yormwell orders.

The chamber fills with motion.

They wrap Baelor's helm first — thick, tight spirals of folded linen around the crown and sides, compressing the damaged metal gently inward so it cannot shift suddenly. You guide their hands, correcting tension, adjusting placement so pressure distributes evenly.

"Not too tight at the throat," you warn. "His airway must remain clear."

Wine is poured over your hands, over the cloth, over the metal edges. It is not sterile — but it is what this century has. When the wrapping is secure, you nod.

"Now we cut."

The maester uses fine metal shears normally meant for trimming chain links. Carefully, painstakingly, he begins cutting the side straps that secure the visor and cheek plates. You keep both palms firm against the helm, preventing outward expansion.

Each snip sounds thunderous in the silent room. Baelor still doesn't move.

His breathing stutters once — you freeze — then resumes.

"Slowly," you whisper. "Do not lift. Let it separate outward into the cloth."

Piece by piece, the helm loosens. A cracked cheek plate falls away into the bandaging.

The visor hinge snaps free, sweat beads along your spine.

Finally, only the back crown remains — the portion most deeply dented.

"This will shift," Yormwell warns.

"I know."

You press one hand at the base of his skull through the wrappings, the other steady at the crown.

"Cut."

The final metal tension releases with a dull metallic snap.

For one horrifying half-second, you feel movement beneath your hands, a subtle give, and you compensate immediately, tightening the linen, pressing evenly, preventing expansion.

The helm comes away in pieces. Underneath, matted hair. Blood. A visible depression along the occipital ridge, but the skull has not separated. You don't allow anyone to gasp.

"More linen," you say quickly. "We bind him now."

You begin wrapping directly over his hair and scalp, creating a firm, circumferential compression bandage to replace the helmet's structural containment.

"Not crushing," you instruct. "Supporting."

The maester watches your technique with dawning comprehension.

"You are countering the swelling," he murmurs.

"Yes."

When the final layer of linen is secured and tied firmly into place, you allow yourself to step back — but only just enough to slide your fingers once more to the side of his neck. You press gently, counting beneath your breath. The pulse is still there, faint, but steadier than it was before.

You lift your eyes to his face. He has slipped into unconsciousness fully now, no longer hovering in that fragile space between speech and silence. His skin has lost its usual warmth of sun-touched bronze; it is pale, almost ashen against the dark spill of his hair. Without the helm, without the tension of command in his posture, he looks younger. Smaller.

His mismatched eyes (one dark, one lighter, always so sharp and attentive) are hidden now behind closed lids.

You watch the slow rise and fall of his chest as if it is the only movement left in the world, then ou lean close.

"My prince," you whisper. "If you can hear me, breathe."

For a long, terrifying moment, nothing changes, then his chest rises — deeper this time. A slow exhale follows, the room collectively releases a breath it has been holding.

"He lives," the maester whispers.

"For now," you correct quietly.

Maester Yormwell watches you in silence, and the look he gives you has changed. The suspicion from earlier has dulled into something far more complicated — wary consideration, edged with reluctant respect. He says nothing as you begin tidying the space around Baelor's head, wiping away excess blood with cloth dampened in wine, ensuring the bandages remain firm but not constricting.

Raymun and Steely Pate have already withdrawn at the maester's instruction, likely to wash and steady themselves, find Dunk.

"I need help removing the rest of the armor," you say, glancing toward one of the younger acolytes. "Carefully. We cannot jostle him."

The acolyte kneels hesitantly beside you as you begin loosening the metal plates from Baelor's torso one strap at a time. As you work, you frown slightly.

"It sits too tightly across the shoulders," you murmur. "This wasn't fitted for him."

Egg, who has not left the side of the bed since returning, lifts his head quickly.

"I know that armor," he says, voice still thick from earlier tears. "It's Valarr's. My cousin's."

You pause for just a moment. Baelor's son.

You have seen him in these halls before — a quiet presence at his father's side, often tucked into the corner of the study while Baelor worked, or seated straight-backed at tournaments, watching with solemn attention rather than childish excitement. A polite, disciplined boy. Thoughtful. He carried himself with a restraint uncommon for his age.

And he looked so much like him : the same dark hair. The same mismatched gaze, the same air of contained gentleness beneath royal bearing.

Your chest tightens, you wonder where he is now.

"He must have lent it to him for the trial," Egg continues quietly. "My uncle did not bring his own. He never meant to fight."

The maester looks at you again, even more confused. "And how would you know a thing like improper fitting? of medicine?"

You open your mouth, already scrambling for something plausible (something that sounds harmless enough for a servant) but before you can form an excuse, the chamber doors slam open with a force that rattles the hinges.

Prince Maekar stands in the doorway.

Mud still clings to his boots, his face is thunderous, grief and fury barely contained beneath a veneer of rigid control.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demands, striding into the room. His gaze snaps to the bed. "I saw him rise. Why is he here? Why is he lying like this?"

You straighten slowly.

"You struck him with your mace, Your Grace," you say evenly. "The impact fractured his skull."

Maekar recoils as though you have slapped him.

"No," he says at once. "No. I did not strike him so."

"It was likely accidental," you continue carefully. "The blow was not meant to kill. But the force—"

"My brother cannot die," Maekar interrupts, his voice cracking despite himself. "He cannot."

And there, the iron façade fractures.

You do not see a prince then, no, you see a younger brother — the boy who once sparred in palace gardens beneath summer suns, wooden swords clashing in laughter instead of fury. The boy who had been lifted first into Baelor's arms before any of the others. The brother who rode beside him into war.

Baelor the hammer, and Maekar the anvil.

Different in temper, in bearing, in light yet forged together in the same fire. Bound not only by blood but by years of battle, counsel, rivalry, and unspoken loyalty. The kind of closeness that does not require softness to exist, the kind that is proven in steel and silence.

It is written across his face now — that history, that terror... but the vulnerability seals over almost immediately.

Maekar straightens, jaw hardening as if remembering exactly who stands before him. The chamber is full of witnesses. Servants, a maid who dared to command.

His silver-white hair hangs in disarray, streaked darker where mud and drying blood have dulled it to ashen grey. The smear across his cheek has not yet been wiped away. He looks less like a prince in that moment and more like a soldier dragged from the field — except for the authority that settles over him again like armor.

The grief is still there, he simply locks it behind his teeth.

"You presume much," he says coldly. "Who are you?"

You meet his gaze, though every instinct urges you to lower it. Almost unconsciously, you take a small step backward (closer to the bed, closer to Baelor) as if the unconscious man might somehow shield you simply by his presence.

And yet you position yourself beside him all the same, as though standing near the Hand of the King might lend you a fragment of protection.

His gaze drags over you slowly — from your face down to the plain fabric of your dress, to the sleeves rolled and stained from blood, to the unmistakable shape of you beneath it all. He takes in the absence of a chain at your throat, the lack of a maester’s robes, the simple shoes of a servant.

You are not a man, you are certainly not a maester... and in his eyes, that alone is accusation enough. 

You tell Maekar your name. "I am a maid in service."

His eyes flash with disbelief.

"A maid?" His voice sharpens dangerously. "A maid laid hands upon the Hand of the King?"

You don't flinch. "I stabilized his skull and prevented further damage when the helm was removed."

"You presume he needed such intervention."

Maester Yormwell steps forward carefully. "Your Grace, I assisted her. Her method was... unconventional, but it was not without merit."

Maekar barely glances at him. "And you allowed this?"

"It was either attempt her method," Yormwell replies measuredly, "or remove the helm outright and risk immediate death."

Egg moves closer to his father, voice trembling but determined. "She knew what she was doing, father'She stopped them from pulling it off in the tent. Father, she saved him."

Maekar's jaw tightens. His gaze returns to you — assessing, furious, frightened.

"You speak of fractured skulls and swelling as though you have studied in Oldtown," he says. "You command knights. You curse at nobles. And you expect me to believe you are merely a maid?"

"I did what was necessary to keep him alive," you answer steadily. "What happens now rests with his body —" you pause," and the gods, if you prefer that phrasing."

His nostrils flare.

"Maester," Maekar says sharply, without looking away from you, "go tend to my son. Aerion remains unconscious."

Yormwell hesitates only briefly before bowing. "At once, Your Grace."

He casts you a fleeting glance (apologetic, perhaps?) and leaves with the acolytes.

Maekar's voice turns to ice. "Guards."

Two men appear in the doorway immediately, you watch confused.

"Take her," he orders. "To the dungeons."

Egg spins toward him. "Father — !"

Maekar does not raise his voice, yet it carries the burden of final judgment.

"Until I determine whether she is savior or sorceress, she will not walk freely within these walls."

"My prince —" you try, the words breaking apart in your throat.

This is not how it was meant to unfold. You were supposed to save him, you were supposed to step back into shadow once the crisis passed — not be dragged from the chamber like a criminal.

The guards seize your arms without ceremony. Their grip is firm, impersonal, and you flinch as iron fingers clamp around your sleeves, pulling you away from the bedside.

You twist just once, looking over your shoulder.

Baelor lies motionless beneath the tight linen wrappings you fashioned in haste and desperation. The bandages encircle his head where the crown once rested. His skin remains pale, almost translucent in the afternoon light, but his chest still rises and falls .

Alive... for now.

You have done everything you could, everything this century allowed. Now you must trust that it was enough.

A bitter thought slips into your mind; that perhaps this was always the bargain. That saving a prince might cost you your own life in return, that death may be the gift granted to the one who interfered with fate.

You swallow hard, tears burning at the corners of your eyes.

"My prince — " you try again, meant for the man on the bed rather than the one condemning you.

Egg is pleading now, his young voice rising in desperation as he clutches at his father's arm, insisting that you saved him, that you knew what you were doing. Maekar silences him with a look alone.

The guards begin pulling you toward the door.

You do not know what awaits you below, whether it will be questioning, chains, or something far worse. You do not know if Baelor will wake, you do not know if the realm will remember the maid who tried.

As the chamber doors close behind you, one fragile hope anchors itself in your chest: If death is coming, let it be swift.

And if the prince lives — let it have been worth it.