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You were sent from Dorne at the turn of the moon, when the heat still clung to the stones of Starfall and the sea lay flat and merciless beneath a calm sky. You had been wed scarce two whole moons ago, carried to Sunspear in silks the color of dawn to bind your blood to that of House Martell. It had been a prudent match, your father said. A strengthening of old ties. The peace that King Daeron had wrought must be tended like a garden, and girls were as useful as rain.
Your husband had been courteous, if distant — a man more enamored of wine and spears than of his bride. He had not been cruel. He had let you be. You had thought, in the stillness of those long Dornish afternoons spent writing letters and wandering about, that you might come to find a kind of companionship in such freedom. But men of Dorne were quick to pride, and prouder still when the Reach was concerned. Words had sharpened into threats, and threats into steel. What began as a quarrel over grazing rights along a disputed border with House Rowan ended in blood beneath a pitiless sun. Your lord husband fell to a lance in a skirmish so small it scarcely warranted a singer.
Widowhood came to you as quietly as dusk. No child quickened in your belly. No voice called you mother. No son to carry on legacy. You wore your mourning veils without tears and felt, beneath the weight of black silk, something colder than grief. Unrest. The knowledge that you had been a piece moved upon a cyvasse board, and would be moved again.
It was your mother then, who spoke of Summerhall.
“Your blood is not only Dornish,” she had reminded you gently. “Your aunt Dyanna sat a princess once, beneath dragon banners. We were girls together at Starfall, she and I. The dragon’s children are of Dayne blood as well. You will not go among strangers.”
But they were strangers. Dragons in truth, if not in form. You had never seen Maekar Targaryen, though he was your mother’s kin by marriage, nor any of his silver-haired brood. You had heard tales enough — of stern tempers, of prophetic dreams, of princes who carried themselves like unsheathed swords. Summerhall itself rose in your imagination half-castle, half-myth, a palace conjured from some Valyrian memory and set down in the green heart of the stormlands.
You were to serve as companion to one of the prince’s daughters — Daella, a girl younger than yourself by some years. It was presented as an honor. A place of safety while Dornish tempers cooled. A renewal of old affection between Starfall and the dragonlords. Yet as the wheelhouse bore you north, away from the red mountains and the salt wind you had known since girlhood, you felt the fragile scaffolding of your life give way once more.
You were a Dayne of Starfall, descended from kings older than the Iron Throne. You told yourself this as the banners changed from sun-and-spear to the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen. Whatever waited for you at Summerhall — shy princesses, cold courtyards, princes with eyes like pale flame — you would meet it with your back unbent. Your late lord husband would have smiled at that.
Still, when the towers of Summerhall first broke against the horizon, pale as bone against the green, your hands trembled in your lap.
The gates of Summerhall yawned before you, black iron set in pale stone, the dragon banners snapping weakly in a wind that carried neither warmth nor welcome. You drew in a slow breath and climbed from the wheelhouse, your skirts brushing the gravel. The courtyard was quiet, but not empty.
Maekar Targaryen waited at the foot of the steps. He was a mountain in the flesh — broad, upright, shoulders squared like a man who expected the world to bend around him and found it did not. His hair was a silver tide, cropped close to his skull, and the lines of his face had been hammered out by years of command and grief. He did not smile. He did not step forward. He only looked at you as one might look at a horse newly broken, eyeing the strength beneath the stillness.
Behind him, his children stirred. Aerion, tall and restless, leaned against a pillar, hands loose at his sides, a mouth half curled with bored amusement that never quite reached his eyes. Aemon lingered closer to his father, cautious and watchful, as if measuring you for some unspoken standard. Daella pressed herself against the stone, violet eyes wide, lips parted in curiosity. Egg and Rhaella, small and uncertain, clung to one another near the steps, their gazes flicking from their father to you.
You kept your head high. You bowed slightly, but not so low as to appear fragile. The veils of your mourning hid your face only partially; what could not be hidden was the calm in your carriage, the quiet certainty that you had endured worse than this and would endure it again.
Maekar’s voice came then, low and rough. “Lady Dayne,” he said. No question, no ceremony, just a statement. “Your mother wrote of your dead husband.”
“Yes, my prince,” you replied. Your words were soft, even, but not afraid.
“Good,” he said, almost grunting. “I have no patience for children playing at grief. You are of my household now. You will accompany my daughter, Daella. You will learn her ways and keep her safe. If you cannot do that… you will find no place here. I have told your lady mother the same.”
You inclined your head once more. “I shall, my prince.”
Aerion rolled his eyes subtly, smirking at nothing, testing boundaries before his father’s glare fell upon him like a hammer. Aemon’s gaze flicked toward the courtyard entrance. “Where is Daeron?” he asked softly, a note of worry in his tone.
“Where the fuck is he?” Maekar barked, voice rough as river stones. “Your brother, boy! You’re always asking questions while he’s off wandering.” He gave Aemon a look sharp enough to cut. “Mind your sister. And stop glaring like a caged bird.”
Daella, encouraged, stepped forward, curiosity bright in her pale gaze. Egg eyed her then, curiosity beyond his years glimmering in his eyes.
Maekar’s attention returned to you, the hard lines of his face softening just a fraction. “Grief is not welcomed in these halls,” he said. “Leave it at the gate. You will be a Dayne among dragons, not a shadow of sorrow.”
You felt the weight of his regard, heavy and unflinching, and met it with a calm you did not need to justify. “I understand,” you said, and you meant it. “You have my thanks.”
He waved a hand toward the steps. “Come. Daella will show you your chambers. Do not make me regret this, girl.”
You followed him, your skirts whispering against the stone, the children falling into place around their father as the air of Summerhall pressed in, green and alive. Your back was straight. Your hands did not tremble. You were a widow. You were a Dayne. And you would meet the dragons with eyes open.
The corridors of Summerhall were cooler than the yard, shadowed and hushed, the rushes underfoot muffling your steps. Tapestries hung between the narrow windows — dragons in crimson thread, battles long past, kings whose names you had recited as a girl. The air felt older inside, as if the stones themselves remembered fire.
Daella led you part of the way before a septa intercepted the princess with some small domestic crisis involving lessons and embroidery. You were left to a quiet maidservant with nervous hands and a tendency to curtsey twice for every word spoken.
“This way, m’lady,” the girl — Lorna — murmured, carrying a taper.
You climbed a narrow stair, turned once, twice. The castle seemed to fold in upon itself here, away from the larger chambers.
“Prince Maekar said these rooms were to be yours.”
You inclined your head. “Very well, thank you.”
The maid pushed open the door.
The chamber smelled faintly of wine.
It was not strong — not the sour stench of a tavern — but warm and lingering, threaded through with beeswax and smoke. The fire in the hearth had burned low. The curtains were half drawn. For a moment you thought the room empty.
Then you saw the boots.
One lay near the hearth, the other tipped onto its side by the bed. A silver goblet rested on the table, overturned but dry.
And on the bed — sprawled atop the coverlets as if he had fallen from the sky — lay a young man with hair a sandy yellow and one arm flung across his face to shield it from a light that was no longer there.
You stopped.
The prince did not stir at first.
He breathed deep and slow, one bootless foot hanging over the edge of the bed as though he had collapsed there mid-thought. The other remained half-caught in the sheets. The coverlets smelled faintly of wine and sweat-warmed linen — not foul, merely lived-in. A goblet lay overturned on the table. A book had fallen open near his hand, its spine bent in surrender.
Lorna made a strangled sound behind you. “Seven save us.”
You did not answer. You stepped further into the chamber instead, closing the door softly with your own hand before the maid could flee for half the castle.
He looked younger in sleep.
Not soft, not entirely — there was a Targaryen cast to his features, sharp in bone if not in expression — but the severity you had glimpsed in his father was absent here. Sunlight crept through the half-drawn curtains and found his face, catching along the bridge of his nose, the pale sweep of lashes against his cheeks. His mouth rested slightly parted. Unarmed.
You had known that sort of collapse yourself. The way one lay down only to escape the noise inside one’s own head. The way wine could blur the edges of memory just enough to make sleep possible.
He sniffed faintly, shifted. His arm slid from across his eyes. A small crease formed between his brows as though he had been dreaming and did not like where the dream had taken him.
“Shall I fetch Prince Maekar?” Lorna whispered, trembling at the threshold.
“No,” you said.
You moved closer to the bed. Close enough now to see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the ink-smudge at the edge of one finger. Close enough to see that the book by his hand was no idle ornament.
“I believe these chambers were meant for me, my lord,” you said softly.
His eyelids fluttered.
For a moment his gaze wandered the ceiling, unfocused and lilac in the morning light. Then it found you.
The silence stretched.
He stared as if you were some apparition conjured from the remnants of a dream — a dark-haired woman in widow’s weeds standing at his bedside, composed as a septa and twice as real.
Awareness came slowly.
The bed. The chamber. You.
“…Shit.”
The word was breathed more than spoken.
He pushed himself up on one elbow, wincing faintly but not disastrously — a man familiar with his own excess. A hand dragged through his pale hair, leaving it more unruly than before. For a heartbeat he looked as though he considered denying the evidence of his own eyes.
“Ah,” he managed hoarsely. “Right.”
He squinted at you, trying to fix you in memory. When recognition failed him, pride stepped in to fill the gap. He swung his legs over the side of the bed in a motion too swift for his condition and nearly sent himself sprawling to the floor before catching himself with both hands against the stone.
You did not move to help him.
He gathered himself with what dignity he could muster, standing barefoot before you, rumpled and faintly wine-soured, but stubbornly upright.
“You’re… Lady Dayne.”
Not a question. A statement offered with the fragile confidence of a man who hoped he was correct.
“I am,” you said.
The faintest suggestion of a smile touched your lips. Not coy, merely simply composed. You did not look away from him. If he felt embarrassment, you did not rush to soothe it. If he feared mockery, you did not grant it.
Behind you, Lorna wrung her hands. “Shall I clean the room for m’lady?”
You did not turn. You had heard of him long before you crossed the Boneway — the drunken dreamer, Prince Daeron, plagued by visions and wine alike. You remembered his father’s voice in the yard, rough with temper: Where is Daeron? There had been anger in it, yes — but not surprise. This was no new failing.
“I was sent to be your sister’s companion,” you said gently, giving him explanation instead of reproach. “Princess Daella.”
He dragged his hands down his face, pressing his fingers hard against his temples as though he might force clarity into himself by sheer will. A long breath left him.
Recognition came slowly. Dayne. Companion. Daella.
His gaze dropped to the fallen boot, the empty goblet, the disordered bed — and for a fleeting instant something flickered across his features. Shame.
It vanished quickly, smothered beneath a familiar mask of indifference, albeit shaky.
“Right,” he said again, more coherently.
He gestured vaguely toward Lorna. “You… go.”
The maid fled with grateful haste, the door clicking shut behind her.
He turned fully toward you now, barefoot against cold stone, hair unbound and pride gathering itself piece by piece.
“Apologies.”
The word was blunt. No flourish, no princely ceremony. Just truth, given because it was owed. You inclined your head, accepting his apology.
“I won’t mention it.”
You moved then, not in retreat but with purpose, crossing to the window. Your fingers found the curtain and drew it back another measure. Pale morning spilled into the chamber, cool and green from the gardens below. It caught in the silver of his hair and in the black of your mourning veil alike — dragon and fallen star, bound by old blood and fresher losses.
“It seems,” you said softly, “we have both been misplaced.”
There was no edge to it. Only recognition.
You felt his gaze follow you — wary at first. Measuring. You knew that look. It was the look of one who expected censure and found none. You kept your distance from the bed, granting him space to gather what pride the night had scattered. In Sunspear you had learned how to stand in rooms where you did not belong. How to make your presence small, your movements deliberate.
Even in the brief marriage you’d endured, you came to understand that care unsettled men more than anger ever did.
“You’ve slept well, I hope?” you murmured, your eyes turned toward the courtyard — pale stone, high walls, clipped green hedges. So far from salt wind and red mountains that the air itself felt thinner.
“Well enough,” he answered at once.
The lie was clean and quick.
You did not look back at him, but you heard it — in the roughness of his voice, in the way silence pressed close afterward. The chamber still smelled faintly of wine and restless sleep. His doublet hung askew; one boot lay fallen like a casualty of some private battle. He bore the look of a man who had wrestled with the dark and lost interest before dawn.
His gaze drifted to the open window, to the gardens beyond where birds wheeled bright and careless in the morning light. The silence that settled between you was heavy, but not hostile. Merely uncharted.
And you let it stand.
—————————————————————
Summerhall did not soften for you all at once. It unfolded slowly, like a wary creature deciding whether to bare its teeth or its throat.
The first to yield was Daella.
She had been all nervous glances and half-finished sentences at your first meeting, fingers twisted in her fancy skirts, voice scarcely louder than a breath. Yet in the quiet hours you carved for her — afternoons spent reading by narrow windows, mornings practicing careful embroidery stitches that did not prick trembling fingers — Daella began to change.
It was not a dramatic transformation. There was no sudden boldness. But she laughed more readily. She asked questions without swallowing them first. She ventured from behind pillars without needing to be coaxed. She would slip her hand into your sleeve as though it were the most natural thing in the world and chatter softly about the gardens, about the birds, about how Father’s voice sounded less frightening when he was tired. With you, she did not flinch so often.
And Maekar noticed.
He never said so directly. Praise was not a language he spoke with ease. But he would pause in doorways longer than necessary, watching his daughter recite a passage without faltering. His sharp gaze would flick to you then, assessing and weighing. Once, when Daella laughed too loudly at some whispered jest, he did not silence her. Instead, he grunted, almost to himself.
“She was not always so timid.”
It was as close to gratitude as he would allow.
You inclined your head. “She is a bright girl, your Grace.”
Maekar’s eyes lingered on you a moment longer than custom required. Gruff he remained, unbending as stone, but something in his regard had shifted. You were no longer merely a widowed obligation sent from Dorne. You had proven useful. Reliable. The sort of steadiness a household built on dragonfire required.
Rhaella and Egg came next, though in different ways.
Rhaella attached herself to you during lessons, sitting close enough that your sleeves brushed, eyes solemn and watchful. She asked questions about Starfall, about Dorne — about the sea, about falling stars, about whether swords truly gleamed like the morning. Sometimes she would simply lean against your side and say nothing at all, as though testing whether you would be moved away.
Egg was less cautious.
He adored you with an earnestness so transparent it ached. He followed you with books tucked beneath his arm, eager to show you some passage he found remarkable. He argued fiercely with Aerion when the older boy dismissed your Dornish inflections. He once declared, in the middle of the yard and to Maekar’s visible irritation, that “Lady Dayne reads better than any septa.” When rebuked, he did not retract it.
At times, without quite meaning to, the younger two treated you with a softness that bordered on the filial. A brush of fingers seeking reassurance. A question asked not as one would ask a companion, but as one would ask a mother. It unsettled you the first time you noticed it.
You were young yet. A widow, yes — but not old enough to bear such gravity.
And yet you were a Dayne. A Dayne just like their late mother.
That fact hovered unspoken in corridors and courtyards alike. It lived in the way servants looked at you a fraction longer than courtesy demanded. In the way Maekar’s gaze sometimes hardened, as though memory and present stood too close together.
If the younger children felt the echo, they did not name it. But they felt safe with you.
Aerion did not.
His hostility was not loud. It was honed.
He smiled too widely when he addressed you, the expression never reaching his eyes. He would compliment your purple gowns in a tone too sweet to be kind. He made light remarks about Dorne’s heat and Dornish tempers, about “stars that fall too easily.”
When Maekar was present, he was the picture of princely civility. When he was not, his gaze sharpened.
It was not jealousy of Daella’s affection. Nor resentment over lessons. It was something stranger, more possessive. As though your very presence shifted some invisible balance in the household. As though a Dayne under this roof meant something had been diluted — or replaced.
And while you did not understand it, you knew that when Aerion watched you, you felt weighed not as a woman but as a symbol.
Daeron, meanwhile, remained the most mercurial thread in the tapestry.
He would appear at supper with eyes rimmed faintly red, quieter than his brothers, hands restless against the table. On better days he spoke little but listened, gaze drifting often to some unseen horizon beyond the hall.
On worse days he did not appear at all.
The castle had a way of swallowing him. He would vanish into towers, into the godswood, into the low hum of taverns beyond the gates. When he returned, wine clung faintly to him like perfume poorly chosen. His laughter could be loud, almost reckless — and then gone as swiftly as it came.
Aerion delighted in it.
“Tell us what you saw last night, brother,” he would purr when Maekar’s attention turned elsewhere. “Did dragons speak? Did the walls burn? Or was it only more smoke in your head?”
Daeron would stiffen. Sometimes he laughed it off. Sometimes he said nothing at all.
Once, you saw his hand tighten so hard around his cup that the knuckles blanched white.
You saw, too, the way he avoided your gaze in those moments — not from guilt alone, but from something like shame.
Dreams plagued him. That much was plain. Not the vague fancies of youth, but something that followed him into daylight. You had glimpsed it that first morning in your chamber — the crease between his brows, the way he surfaced from sleep as though dragged unwillingly from deeper waters.
When Aerion mocked him, you felt a stillness settle inside yourself.
You knew what it was to carry something unspoken beneath one’s ribs. To smile while unrest coiled quietly within.
And yet you did not reach for him. You were not his keeper. Not his confessor. You were companion to Daella. Steady presence to the younger children.
Still, sometimes — when Daeron passed you in a corridor, sober and pale in the afternoon light — you would catch that fleeting flicker in his eyes. Something fragile and glassy, that if you were to name it, could splinter him in two, you were certain.
It made you pause more than Aerion’s cruelty ever did.
Summerhall had begun to accept you. Daella blossomed. Egg beamed. Even Maekar seemed, in his unyielding way, satisfied.
But beneath it all, currents moved.
—————————————————————
The heat lay thick that evening, slow and unmoving even as dusk gathered along the hedges. The marble bench in the inner garden still held the sun’s warmth, and the air smelled faintly of roses bruised beneath the day’s glare.
You had abandoned black weeks ago, Dayne purple adorning your every gown now. The evening softened the sharpness people often mistook for severity.
Daella sprawled beside you upon the bench, slippers discarded somewhere in the grass, silver curls slipping free of their pins. A pitcher of watered lemon rested between you, already half empty.
“Was he handsome?” Daella asked abruptly, toying with the silk of her skirts.
You glanced at her, amused. “You are very certain that matters.”
“It does,” Daella insisted. “At least a little. Lords and princes ought to be handsome in tales.”
You considered. “He was tall. Had thick dark hair. The Dornish sun was kind to him.”
“That means yes.”
“It means,” you said, pouring what remained in Daella’s cup, “that I was not displeased to look at him.”
Daella leaned closer, lowering her voice as though you spoke of scandal.
“Were you in love?”
The question came quickly, but not carelessly. There was something earnest beneath it — something hopeful.
You felt the warmth of the stone through the thin silk at your back. A breeze stirred the hedges, faint and insufficient. Your throat ached, thinking of the right words.
“He was courteous to me,” you said.
Daella frowned at once. “That is not what I asked.”
No, it was not.
You lifted your gaze and that was when you saw him.
Beyond the clipped hedge, near the archway leading toward the eastern walk, a pale figure stood half in shadow. Still enough to have been there some time. Not close — but not passing through, either.
Prince Daeron.
He did not move when your eyes found him. The dusk gathered around him, turning his sandy hair almost silver, his expression unreadable from the distance.
You returned your attention to Daella.
“I respected him,” you said at last.
The word felt clean. Safe. Not a lie, Daella did not deserve that.
You searched her face. “And is that for enough for marriage?”
“For some,” you replied with a shrug.
You did not look toward the archway again, though you felt the weight of being observed settle lightly against your shoulders.
Daella drew her knees up beneath her skirts. “I think I should like to be in love.”
Your mouth curved faintly. “I think you should like another cup before you decide such things.”
Daella gasped softly. “There is hardly any left.” She peered into the pitcher as though betrayed by it.
“I shall fetch more,” you declared, sliding from the bench with sudden purpose. “Do not go anywhere.”
“As my princess commands,” you assured her.
Daella darted toward the side door that led back into the cooler corridors, her light steps fading quickly.
The garden quieted.
You did not turn immediately. You let the silence settle first, the fountain’s murmur, the distant rustle of leaves. Then you rose.
“Why don’t you join us, my prince?” you said not unkindly, perhaps even warmly.
He shifted then, stepping more fully from the shadow of the arch. Up close, the dusk revealed the faint tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flexed once at his side before stilling. He must have had bad dreams once again.
“I did not wish to interrupt,” he said. His voice was steady. Almost too steady. A heavy contrast to the tension he carried in his shoulders.
“You were not interrupting,” you replied. “You were listening.”
A faint flicker passed across his face — not quite embarrassment, not quite defiance.
“I was passing through.”
“And paused.”
He did not deny it.
The air between you felt heavier now that Daella’s chatter had gone. The garden seemed smaller without her.
You did not care for his sneaking about. There were murmurs, of course — of taverns, of brothels, of wine purchased in discreet quantities and consumed in indiscreet ones. Of a prince who wandered because stillness was the greater torment.
“You move very softly for a man in boots,” you said at last.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I was not aware I was required to announce myself.”
“You were not,” the reply was soft, spoken into the soft breeze rustling through rose bushes, through grass and hair. You felt your chest tighten, maybe for the first time since your arrival, the weight of vulnerability almost alien now. “But the topic at hand wasn’t meant for your ears. Or anyone’s really.”
He took a step closer, slow, deliberate, the shadows of the hedge wrapping around him. “Curiosity does not care for propriety,” he said, voice lighter now, teasing, almost theatrical. “You shroud yourself in mystery. You’ll have to forgive me for trying to peer behind the facade of perfection you maintain.”
You arched an eyebrow. “You think me perfect, my prince?”
He let a faint, crooked smile tug at the corner of his lips. “Perfection is rarely so deliberate,” he said. “But there is… a discipline to you that makes one pause.”
“I see,” you replied lightly, tilting your head. “And you, I take it, have no discipline at all.”
“Hardly,” he admitted, shrugging. “I am a prince of leisure, and of poor habits. My father would tell you the same. Though I like to think my charm compensates.”
You laughed softly, the sound scattering faintly among the hedges. “I will judge that for myself, then. Shall I begin with your boots or your walk?”
He tipped his head, amusement flickering through his eyes, and let the silence stretch just long enough to make you wonder if he might respond with something unexpectedly clever. “Your judgment is keen,” he said finally. “And dangerous. I suppose I should take care, lest you find me wanting.”
“I am honest,” you said simply. “And a Dayne. We notice such things — always striving for ideals.”
A shadow passed over his expression, subtle, almost imperceptible at first, but the air between you shifted. His voice dropped, sharper this time, edges harder than the teasing from before. “Dayne, yes. And yet… I would not have you act as if you are someone else. You are not—” He stopped, faltered, eyes glazing over as thoughts — memories perhaps? — washed over him. His chest rose, brows creasing into a frown meant for him, not for you.
Then finally he barked, too abruptly, “You talk to Daella as if you are her, when you are not! Do not move as if you are—“
Your pulse quickened. The warmth of the evening felt suddenly stifling. A bead of sweat ran from neck to spine. “I am not her,” you said, calm but firm. “I am myself. Nothing more, nothing less.”
His eyes flicked toward the hedges, as if expecting shadows to leap into accusation, then back to you. He drew a long breath, hands loosening slightly at his sides, voice roughened but quieter now. “Good,” he said, though the edge in his tone remained. “Because I… I could not bear a replacement. Not here. Not now. Neither could the little ones.”
You let the moment hang, unspoken, feeling the tension coil and settle in the hush between you. The faint smell of roses and sun-warmed stone mingled with the last of the day’s heat, and he lingered, neither retreating nor advancing further.
His gaze lingered on you longer than courtesy allowed, and you felt it like a weight pressing across your chest, drawing heat to your cheeks — blooming faintly. There was a sharpness in it, a fascination that did not belong entirely to curiosity. For a moment, he looked at you not as a companion to Daella, not as an echo of the mother he had lost, but as a woman — alive, present, vivid in the fading light.
Your breath caught slightly, though you did not move. The tilt of his head, the way his fingers flexed at his sides, the slight parting of his lips… it was as though the air itself had turned taut between you. You could not name it, but you felt it.
A faint memory of your late husband scratched beneath the surface, insisting attention. But even when he’d been alive, when he’d lay with you in those rare nights between whoring and dancers, he’d met your lips with duty, not passion. He’d been as gentle as any maiden could have hoped for. Daeron’s gaze promised no such thing.
Then the moment broke, as if it had never been meant to exist. His breath hitched and he shuddered, mouth twisting into a frown — a grimace even — the spell between you snapping in two.
He stepped back abruptly, his body stiffening, and his hands curled into fists at his sides. His jaw worked once, twice, and then he spun on his heel, moving with hurried, uneven strides toward the eastern walk, shoulders hunched as though trying to escape something pressing him from all sides.
“Prince—?” you called softly, a frown pulling your brow. But he did not look back. The sound of his boots on the gravel faded quickly, leaving you alone.
Your pulse thrummed against your temples. You pressed your hands to your skirts, confused and unsettled. The air felt heavier now, thick with something unspoken you could not name. Had you said something wrong? Or had he… been looking at you in a way meant for another? Your mind was reeling.
Daella’s return, light-footed and oblivious, shattered the lingering hush. The girl called for lemon water, cheeks flushed from her dash through the corridors, and the garden seemed impossibly ordinary again. But you could not shake the tension of the vanished prince, the echo of his gaze, or the unsettled stirring it had left behind.
—————————————————————
The night would not cool.
Thick heat clung to the stone of Summerhall long after the sun had sunk, and your chambers held the day’s warmth like a well-kept secret. The shutters stood half-open, curtains stirring in sluggish breaths. Somewhere below, the gardens exhaled roses gone heavy and overblown.
You had meant to sleep. But instead you sat upon the edge of the bed, fingers resting idle atop the coverlet, listening to the restless chorus of insects beyond the walls.
The door struck the stone with a crack that shattered the quiet.
You flinched — a quiet shriek slipping past your lips — heart leaping hard enough to hurt.
Prince Daeron stood framed in the doorway, one shoulder braced against it as if the corridor itself had thrust him forward. The candlelight caught the ruin of him: hair disordered, collar unlaced, doublet wrinkled and half-hanging from one arm. His eyes were red-rimmed, bright in a way that was not wholly wine.
The smell reached you a moment later. Sour red wine. Sweat. Cheap perfume. Night air.
“My prince—” your voice faltered before you mastered it. “Are you- The hour is late.”
He closed the door behind him without looking at you.
“Yes,” he said, though the word seemed distant to him.
He began to move at once, as though stillness might suffocate him. Three strides toward the hearth, pivot, three back toward the bed. His boots ground softly against the stone. His hand raked through his hair again and again, tugging at the strands until they stood wild about his face, a sandy halo surrounding his features.
You rose slowly, though you did not know whether you meant to retreat or to steady him. Your pulse beat hot in your throat.
“You should not be here. If your father caught you—,” you said, and this time there was no softness in it.
“No.” He laughed once under his breath. There were tears brimming in his eyes. “No, I should not.”
Yet he did not leave.
He paced harder. The chamber was not large, with each turn he seemed to come nearer the bed, nearer you. The air felt suddenly thin. The candle flame fluttered as he passed it, shadow breaking and reforming along the walls.
“I cannot—” He stopped, swallowed, began again. “I cannot be rid of it.”
“Rid of what?” you asked.
He did not answer. He dragged both hands down his face as though trying to strip the skin from it. His shoulders were tight as drawn wire.
“It was only a dream,” he muttered. “A foolish, rotted thing. But you know my dreams… They- they mean things.”
The word dream settled between you like a dropped blade. You felt the first cold thread of unease coil low in your stomach.
“And that warrants this?” you asked, gesturing faintly at the disarray of him — the hour, the wine, the intrusion.
He turned toward you then. The look in his eyes made your breath catch.
“I thought if I drank enough,” he said, voice fraying at the edges, “if I found distraction enough—”
His mouth twisted. He resumed pacing, faster now.
You became acutely aware of your bare feet against the rug, of the thinness of the silk clinging to your skin in the heat. A tremor of irritation ran through you, chased swiftly by something you did not wish to name.
“You reek of your distractions,” you said, sharper than you intended.
That earned you a glance — fleeting, then lingering. His gaze dropped before he could stop it. Down the line of your throat. The fall of your hair over your shoulder. The shape of you where the candlelight pressed gold against violet silk. The rise and fall of your chest. The look was brief.
You stepped back without meaning to.
His jaw clenched.
“They did not feel like you,” he said hoarsely.
The words struck you harder than the door had. You stared at him, confusion rising first, then something colder.
“I do not know what you mean.”
He let out a ragged breath that was almost a laugh. “That is the misery of it.”
He stopped pacing then, too close now. An arm’s length, no more. You could see the pulse hammering in his throat, the faint tremor in his fingers as they opened and closed at his sides.
“It was not the same,” he said. “It was wrong.”
Your unease sharpened.
You felt your composure slipping — not shattering, but thinning, as silk does when pulled too tight. You had faced courts and condolences and the measured cruelties of polite society without wavering.
This was different. This was a man unraveling in your chambers, speaking in fragments that circled you without explanation.
“You will leave,” you said, though the firmness you aimed for wavered at the edges.
“Yes,” he said immediately. Then softer, almost to himself, “Yes. I must.”
Yet he did not move.
His hand lifted — halfway between you — then halted in the air. Not reaching for you. Not quite. The hesitation was worse than touch might have been.
He let it fall.
“I thought if I proved it was nothing,” he said, voice rough with self-disgust, “that I could make it nothing.”
“And could you?” you asked before you could stop yourself, irritation gnawing at the edge.
His gaze dropped to your mouth, then snapped away as though burned. That was answer enough.
You breathed shallowly now. The heat felt suffocating. You did not know whether you wished him gone or demanded that he explain himself until sense returned to the world.
“You shame yourself,” you said quietly. “And you shame me by speaking so.”
That seemed to reach him at last.
His knees buckled under the weight of him — the weight of wine, of heat, of whatever hunted him in sleep. He did not fall entirely, but folded inward, hands braced atop his thighs as though the floor had tilted beneath him. His head hung low, sandy hair slipping forward to veil his face.
“Forgive me,” he rasped. His hands trembled where they rested, fingers flexing against the cloth of his breeches as if testing whether he still occupied his own skin. “It was vile. My mind is vile.”
The word lodged in your chest.
“I will not speak of your intrusion to your lord father,” you said, your voice thinner now than you intended. “You have my word.”
“No.” The word snapped from him, sudden and sharp.
He straightened too quickly, swaying once before catching himself, though still on his knees. When his eyes lifted to yours, they were bright, not merely with drink, but with something raw and searching. He looked at you as though you were the only fixed point in a room that would not stop turning.
“No,” he repeated, quieter, but no less urgent. “That is not what I—”
His throat worked.
“I have dreamt of you.”
“You are drunk,” you managed.
“Yes.”
The honesty of it struck harder than denial might have.
He crept an inch toward you without seeming aware of it. Not close enough to touch — but close enough that you could see the fine sheen of sweat, glistening on his forehead, the tightness at the corner of his mouth where shame had settled.
“It was not—” He broke off, jaw clenching. “It was not as it should be.”
“As it should be?” you echoed, pulse thundering now.
His gaze faltered, then returned, as if he forced it.
“You stood where you stand now,” he said, voice lowering, unsteady. “In light like this. And I—” His hands lifted a fraction before falling uselessly to his sides. “I could not tell whether I meant to kneel or to—“
You felt heat crawl up your throat — not the gentle warmth of summer, but something sharper. The room felt smaller by the second, air thinning, walls pressing inward.
“You will stop,” you said, and this time the command trembled.
“I tried,” he said, almost pleading now. “I tried to make it another face. Another voice. I went out and found—” His expression twisted, disgust turning inward. “It did not matter. It returned to you. I had you underneath me. I tasted you but— it was wrong. You sounded like—”
Your stomach lurched. The word, simple and intimate, clung to the air like smoke. You pressed your palms to your chest, trying to anchor yourself.
“I heard her,” he went on, almost whispering, each syllable tearing at him as he spoke, “My mother’s voice. Softer, gentler… guiding, calling. And it was wrong. I knew it was wrong even as it burned inside me.”
Your voice trembled. “You speak madness.”
“I am mad!” he shouted, then immediately caught himself, trembling like a leaf caught in a storm. “I do not… I tried. I tried to make it vanish. I sought the whores. I sought the wine. I tried to drown it all, but it clung to me. Even waking, I could not… it would not leave me. I cannot unsee it, unfeel it.”
The confession hung between you, obscene in its vulnerability.
The image — unwanted, vivid — burned behind your eyes. You despised that he had placed it there.
“You come here,” you said, voice shaking now despite your effort, “after lying with gods know who, and you speak to me of this filth?”
“I lay with no one,” he snapped, then faltered. “I tried. It would not—”
His expression twisted in disgust.
“It would not change,” he finished.
You stumbled backward, startled at your own rising panic. Your chest heaved. You had never seen him like this — not in the hall, not at dinner, not in the presence of the children. And now here he was, undone before you, unhinged, and you were caught between fear, unwilling pity, and something else. Something that burned at the sight of him on his knees before you.
“You cannot speak to me so,” you said at last, voice breaking in its own small way. “Do you hear? You cannot speak to me like this!”
He lifted his head, eyes glossy, haunted. “I speak because I must. I speak because the shame will eat me if I do not. I have tried everything to drive it away… and it remains. Even now, it burns, and I—I have tasted you. In dreams. And it is worse than any wine, any sin I have known.”
The thought of what he had imagined, what he had dreamt, seared through your carefully constructed calm. You could not look away, though you wanted to, though every instinct shouted at you to flee.
“I… I cannot,” you whispered, shaking. “I cannot. You are alone in your sin, do you hear me?”
“I know,” he murmured, his voice collapsing into something scarcely more than breath. Yet still his hands found you, hot and unsteady, closing around your fingers with iron strength and the dampness of sweat. “I know, I know… and I ought not ask. I cannot… contain it. I am… I am—”
His face fell forward, striking softly against your thighs, burying itself in silk and warmth as though he sought to hide from the world there. A broken sob tore from him and his shoulders began to shake with it. His fingers tightened, clutching at you. You felt the damp heat of tears through the fine weave of your gown, the humiliating press of snot and breath against your skin.
For a heartbeat you stood frozen.
“Daeron,” you breathed, and the name felt perilous on your tongue. “I— What would you have me do?”
His grip tightened.
“I am sick,” he rasped into the silk. “My thoughts are rot. I wake with it still on me. I wake and it clings to me — your skin beneath my hands, your smell, her voice in my ear — gods, the voice—”
“Daeron,” you warned, your fingers tightening in his hair without meaning to. His lashes were wet with tears as his stare met yours.
“Help me forget,” he pleaded.
The candlelight trembled between you. So did you.
“You speak of forgetting as though it were a cup to be emptied,” you said, though your voice lacked its former steel. “Dreams do not yield so easily.”
“They do if something drives them out,” he said hoarsely.
His brow pressed against yours again, not in reverence now but in desperation. You felt the heat of him through silk, the dampness of tears cooling against your skin. He was young in that moment. Not princely. Not defiant. Only unmoored.
“It is her voice,” he went on, quieter now, words dragging from him as if each cost blood. “That is the cruelest part. She speaks as she did when I was a boy. Gentle. Proud.” His jaw tightened. “And then it twists. The dream twists. And it is you standing where she stood. You are the one who cradles my face and lets me taste sweetness.”
You held your breath.
“I need it to be your voice,” he said. “Your sighs that speak my name. Not hers.”
He watched you as though awaiting sentence — all but stripped bare. The wine had loosened his tongue, but this was no drunken boast. There was too much shame in it. Too much clarity.
“You mistake me for a cure,” you said at last, though your voice was faint.
His fingers slid from your thighs, not in retreat but in restraint, coming to rest against the silk at your hips as if he dared not climb higher without leave. He bowed his head again, but this time not in collapse — in control wrestled back by inches. You felt his breath, hot and stuttering.
“No,” he replied, lifting his gaze to yours. “I mistake you for something I want.”
“You are not thinking clearly,” you insisted, though the protest lacked conviction, weak even to your own ears. Your thumb slicked rogue strands of blonde from his forehead.
“I have thought of little else.” The words were steady now.
You did not speak. Even if you wished to, your voice would certainly fail you. Your head tipped back, breath unsteady, as your pulse turned thunderous in your ear.
“Seven help me,” he murmured — not as prayer, but as surrender.
He bent toward you, slow at first, as though granting you a final chance to recoil. When you did not, something in him broke loose. His hands found your waist, urgent but not cruel, drawing you closer as his face pressed against the fall of silk at your skirts. The warmth of his breath seeped through fabric and skin alike.
This was no gallant seduction sung of in halls. It was hunger edged with grief. Want knotted with guilt.
You could feel the unrest in him — the battle between reverence and ruin. You felt desire rear its head as he inched closer. His mouth brushed upward along the line of your gown, hesitant, then surer, testing whether you would deny him.
You did not.
His lips parted against the silk at your hip, the kiss damp through fabric, slow and deliberate rather than frantic. He’d meant to savour it, you understood. The heat of it bled through the thin weave of your gown, and a low sound — half groan, half exhale — escaped him, swallowed by cloth and shadow.
Your thighs quivered. The sensation was muted but no less intimate, no less obscene. You felt him then — the proof of his desire hard in his breeches, pressed firmly against your leg. How long had he been hard?, you wondered.
“Seven save me.” Was it his voice or yours? You could not tell anymore as his tongue brushed against silk covered folds, flat and firm. Burning through you.
The heat beneath your skirts flared, sharp and consuming, and you could only clutch at him, torn between shock, fear, and something darkly urgent that made you unable to pull away.
He lapped at you like a man starving, prying and tugging at your night gown — to lose it, to reveal you fully and let him indulge. And who were you to deny a prince, a son, a man grieving, his vices?
Daeron’s breath came ragged, his fingers trembling as you finally rid yourself of your gown, lilac fabric pooling at your ankles. Every inch of him was alight — shame and need warring in his chest like dragons tearing at each other.
“Gods,” he muttered against your skin, voice thick with want and something darker. He didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve you. But you hadn’t pushed him away.
His tongue found you properly now: wet heat slick beneath it as he licked a slow stripe up through damp curls. You gasped — a sound that went straight to his cock — and suddenly there was no more patience left in him.
He parted your folds with two fingers before dragging that broad tongue over every sensitive spot: circling just above where you needed most, teasing and building tension until all you could do was arch into it helplessly.
And only then did Daeron finally give you what you both craved — the full press of lips and tongue lapping hungrily between swollen folds while one finger slid deep inside without warning. Your fingers sank deeper into his hair, pressing him close, letting moan and breath reverberate.
“Please,” you heard him mutter between squelches of want, a long finger curling inside you. “I need t’hear your voice.”
“Don’t you stop,” you practically begged, gasps too loud in the stillness of your chamber. Sweat beads at your hair, his breath hotter than the summer air had been. Your back hit the heavy oak of the bedpost behind you, anchoring your trembling knees. “Use your tongue. Make me feel good.”
And then — the slip happened without thought. A broken whisper against wet heat:
“Fuck… mother—” It was a filthy mistake, one that should’ve made him recoil in horror, but instead it only fueled the fire burning low in his gut.
You ought to push him away, hurl insults and command him gone. But then he sealed his mouth over your pearl and sucked hard, the word tumbling out between messy licks and greedy swallows of honeyed arousal. Over and over now, like prayer.
Mother, mother, mother.
“Yes,” you gasped. “Yes, Daeron.”
Your thighs clamped around either side of his head as pleasure surged through you both. You could feel him, rutting against you with every push of his finger, like a dog seeking relief.
So you, once again, allowed him to indulge, allowed yourself to release, to savour every stroke and lick. Waves of pleasure washing away nights of quiet sobs, of mourning and homesickness. Tonight, you were but absolution for a man crazed with lust and guilt, fulfilling your purpose.
By the time the last candle guttered low, Daeron had grown heavy against you. You lay atop your coverlet, sweat slick and tired. His chest rested between your thighs, still warm from passion and the heat of your bodies, and you felt the faint tremor of his breathing through your stomach. He’d spent hours lapping at you — lazily at times, then fervent again. His hands lay limply at your sides, his head tucked as though it might disappear there forever.
You froze at first, unsure what you ought to do, heart hammering against ribs that had yet to settle from the night’s chaos. He smelled of sweat and wine and something darker, something like despair — a scent that clung to you as much as he did.
“Daeron…” you whispered, uncertain if the sound was a warning or a prayer. He lifted his eyes for a fleeting moment, gaze unfocused and luminous with exhaustion and need.
“I cannot leave,” he murmured, voice muffled, almost swallowed by the space between you. “Not yet. Not alone… not without you here.”
You pressed a hand to his shoulder, hesitated, then let it rest there. The heat of him, the weight of him, pressed against you in a way that was both intimate and terrifying. You wanted to move him, to create distance, to restore propriety and safety — but some part of you, terrified and helpless, stayed. You wanted to be the one he could lean on, the anchor to his storm.
He breathed against you, slow and ragged now, and you felt the tremor of spent desire and raw longing ripple through him. Each shudder of his chest was a confession without words, a surrender you could not name. And yet, even as exhaustion stole the sharpness from his movements, you felt the pull of him — of the hunger and the grief and the need — lingering still, an invisible thread that tethered you both to the night.
You allowed yourself a shallow breath, the realization dawning that in letting him rest there, you had become part of his penance, his reprieve, and perhaps, in some small, forbidden way, his salvation.
Until dawn, at least.