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The feasting hall is filled with the lack of you.
Your ghost sits in the empty chair next to Baelor’s; an absence he should be used to by now, but one that still weighs on his chest like steel all the same. He cannot remember the last time you supped with him, now that he thinks about it, or the last time you broke your fast with him at sunrise. You hardly ever leave your chambers, and when you do, you’re either alone in the study or hidden in the farthest edge of the expansive gardens out back.
You live your life in King’s Landing in solitude. Baelor can’t quite figure out if that’s what you truly want, or if the isolation is what you think you deserve.
“Do we know if the girl has taken so much as a bite since she came to us?” Baelor’s father, the king, asks from the head of the long table.
“Do we know if the girl is even aware that the war is over?” Aerion scoffs from the opposite end, with his mouth still full. He wipes the salty juice of meat from his chin and jokes aloud, “She spent so long eating nothing but grass and horseflesh, perhaps she no longer has a taste for real food— Ow!”
He winces under his father’s harsh hand, when Maekar reaches around to slap at the back of his silver head.
“That’s because she was actually fighting a war,” the older man deadpans with a heavy scowl. “Not simply playing at one in drunken jousts.”
Despite your family’s treason, the Targaryens couldn’t help but feel a strange sort of sympathy for you — Maekar and Baelor mostly, along with Daeron, who, in his drunken rambles, said he often dreamt of you bathing in dragonfire (“That’s just because you’re a pervert, brother,” Aerion had said.)
It was not you who waged the war after all, but rather your father; and you were all that was left to pay for his sins. No one else seems to see it that way, though.
“She lost her home. And her family with it…” Baelor’s soft voice cuts through the tension in the candlelight dining hall. He slices through his steak with a knife and fork, if only to perform the act, because he had long lost his appetite waiting for you. “Surely, we can’t expect her to feel at ease here so soon.”
“She’s been here for five moons turns and married to you for four,” his father argues, soft but still strikingly stern. “Your mother was pregnant in half that time.”
Maekar makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “Please, father, continue talking about bedding my mother at the feasting table— I wanted to lose my appetite anyway.”
Baelor is sent to fetch you a moment later, not under his father’s command, but the king’s.
“Make her understand that she is not just your wife, but the Realm’s future queen. And that certain duties are required of her,” he’d said, firm but not entirely unkind. “We have been gracious hosts, yes, but she was brought here to be made an example of. Surely she knows by now that our courtesy is not a kindness she is owed.”
He finds you in the gardens, where he’s learned that you spend most of your evenings, on the farthest end where the tiger lilies grow. It was the sigil of your house, of which you are now its only remaining member.
You’re already awaiting his arrival in the center of the wooden gazebo, having heard his footsteps on the cobbles and the greetings he shared with your handmaidens around the bend. You stand at the center of it with a large book clasped to your chest and smile when you see him, though it doesn’t quite reach your eyes.
“Your Grace,” you greet with a bowed head.
“I think we’ve moved past the need for such courtesies, princess. Call me Baelor,” the older man hums with a tender smile. The steps of the wooden structure creak under his weight as he rises to meet you — a pretty girl donned in a dress of black velvet, as if you were waiting for another funeral. “Did the handmaidens summon you for supper?”
You nod once and tilt your chin to keep his gaze when he stands before you, weathered hands clasped behind his back.
“They did, Your Grace.”
He tilts his chin and gives you a stern look, made of raised brows and glimmering brown-blue eyes.
You clear your throat and correct yourself. “They did, Baelor.”
“Then why are you still hiding yourself out here, my lady?”
His mismatched eyes soften around the edges as they flit back and forth between both of yours. A kind smile hints at his mouth beneath his greying beard. The one you give him in return is much sadder in comparison.
“We both know nobody wants me there, Your Grace,” you tell him.
He flinches slightly, chin jerking, as if your words have offended somehow. “Surely you know by now that isn’t true. It was my brother who was asking after your whereabouts, actually— As was my father.”
He doesn’t tell you that that’s only partially true.
He thinks you already know, besides.
“Well, it was your nephew who stole my clothes in the shower this morning,” you confess with a cynical grin and something sad swimming in your eyes, as your fingers fidget on the leather-bound book between them. “I heard him laughing as he ran off down the hall with them. And since no one would retrieve a fresh dress for me, I had to walk back to my quarters naked.”
Baelor swallows through the anger that rises like bile in his throat. “I will see to it that he is properly reprimanded, princess, I promise you—”
“And what of the cook who spat in my oaten porridge this morning before handing it off to me, Your Grace?” you ask with a dry laugh.
“Who?” Baelor blurts, features hardened in a flicker. He smells of leather and musk and a freshly cooked meal when he takes a slow step closer to you. “Tell me who it was, and I will have them punished—”
“It won’t change anything,” you shrug. “I come from a family of traitors, Your Grace. I will be sneered at wherever I go until the day I die—”
“I will protect you from them—”
“If you punish one of them, you’ll just create a thousand more,” you say with a laugh, though there is very little humor inside it. “I know this marriage was arranged to make you seem merciful, but you really should’ve killed me with the rest of them— It would’ve been kinder, Your Grace.”
Baelor softens again at your confession and fights the urge to comfort you physically. The hands behind his back tighten into trembling fists instead.
“I don’t expect you to feel at home here so soon, my lady, but I do hope with time—” He cuts himself off when you scoff a humorless laugh. His brows lower in confusion; his lip flickers upward in a faint half-smile. “What is it?”
“Don’t pretend like I’m anything other than a prisoner here, Your Grace,” you tell him.
“You’re our guest,” Baelor corrects, firm but strikingly tender. “My wife—”
You laugh like he’s said something funny.
“Well, excuse me, Your Grace, but the three of those seem to be mutually exclusive in my experience.”
Baelor falters. His chest flares with a white-hot feeling, like a sword shoved into his chest and twisting. The war has already taught him what that sort of carnage feels like, and he feels his hurt pooling like blood in his mouth just now.
He doesn’t know why your words hurt him so, only that they do — only that they shred any remnants of hope that he could have a somewhat happy marriage here with you; that he could have learned to love you as he did his first wife.
His softness slips away just as his silly daydreams do. His kind features harden in an instant as he tells you in an unfeeling monotone, “Your food is getting cold, my lady. There’s a plate waiting for you in the feasting hall— where the king is eagerly anticipating your arrival. It is not wise to keep him waiting.”
He leaves without another word.
You stay in place and try to catch your breath when he’s gone.
—
Dinner goes about as well as any feast surrounded by your captors possibly could.
You stomach a small bite of steak, if only to please the king sitting to your right, but start to feel sick almost instantly.
The charred edges remind you of the bodies they burnt on the battlefield, piled on top of each other, far too many to bury. The savory juice pools warm on your tongue, and you can’t help but think of the blood, which sat heavy in the air the early morning your father lost the war he started.
You sit silent, clouded by thoughts of war, between the men who saw your family slaughtered. No one addresses you for the majority of the dinner, not until the king sucks cabbage from his teeth and wonders aloud: “Is it not past time you gave your prince another son, my lady?”
You think he says it to be polite, or to start a cordial conversation with you, though it only makes you feel sicker.
Baelor huffs a faint laugh. “Let us not spoil our meal with such talks, father—”
“I pray for it every day,” you answer in a quiet monotone, always so meek in your way, but never once taking your eyes off the older man at the head of the table. “Beneath the weirwood tree in the garden.”
Baelor’s head snaps in your direction. A palpable look of confusion twists his scruffy features as his mismatched eyes dart over your profile. “Truly?” he hears himself ask.
You nod once. “Just as I pray for the king’s long, healthy reign, Your Grace.”
The quiet venom in your words does not go unnoticed.
You turn away without another word, and no one bothers to speak to you for the rest of dinner.
You think you’ve gotten away scot free until you’re summoned later that night, after you’ve long traded your heavy black dress for your cream night gown. You’re tying the silk lace at the chest of your slip when your handmaiden knocks and slips inside — a young girl from Lorath, who had also lost her family in the war. She is, perhaps, the only person in the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms who doesn’t look at you like you’re a total traitor.
“Princess?” she greets in a low, accented voice.
“Yes?”
You turn to glance at her over your shoulder and find the girl fidgeting awkwardly in the entryway. “It’s Prince Baelor. He has requested your presence in his chambers.”
Your heart stops and does a backflip as it plummets to your stomach, where it sits like a leaden weight and makes it very suddenly hard to breathe.
Baelor requesting your company in the feasting hall, or in the study, or in the gardens was one thing — but him requesting your presence in his quarters was entirely another.
You clear your throat and turn away, hoping that your handmaiden doesn’t notice the flicker of fear that passes over your features in the mirror. “At this hour?” you ask, voice trembling.
“He insisted, princess,” she tells you.
You do as requested and make way to his chambers. You are in no position to turn him down — you are his property, after all, in more ways than one; as his wife, in the eyes of the Seven, and as his prisoner, but the rule of Targaryen law.
Baelor had been nothing but kind to you, to be sure. By all accounts, you got lucky in receiving him as husband, instead of any other Targaryen heir or your head on a pike next to your father’s. You’re still alive, yes, but not quite living; still alive, but not quite free.
You’re escorted down the cobbled corridor to his quarters by your handmaiden and a white-cloaked knight. The oak is hard against your knuckles when you knock on his chamber door; the golden knob is heavy in your fist when you swing it open following his muffled command. You find Baelor standing at the round table by an open window, pouring two goblets of wine, still clad in his all-black day garb.
“You weren’t sleeping, were you?” he asks in lieu of greeting.
You shake your head as you walk to his side, white slip flowing behind you. “No, Your Grace.”
“Baelor,” he corrects with a kind smile and a pair of glimmering eyes. He’s already had a few cups before you got here; you can see it in his glassy gaze, smell it on his breath.
Your fingers shake when they reach for the chalice he passes you.
“No, Baelor,” you say.
You bring the golden-rimmed cup to your mouth. You still haven’t quite gotten used to the taste of Tagaryen spirits — they’re far too bitter, you’ve found, too dull. But even still, you tip your head back and down the contents in three swift swallows.
You feel the burn trail from your throat, to your chest, and down into your stomach. You revel in the way it prickles at your skin as you set the cup back to the table, wiping your slick mouth with the back of your free hand.
Baelor watches in silence as you head for the made bed across the room. You reach for the tie in your nightgown in a movement that looks utterly mechanical — like you already know what’s about to happen, like you plan to get it over with as soon as possible.
His stomach ripples with excitement while his chest flares with hurt.
“Could we not have a decent conversation first, princess?” he wonders with a quiet smile, that he hopes covers the pain in his eyes. “I don’t see any reason why this cannot be cordial.”
You glance at him over your shoulder. Zero emotion graces your features as the edges of your slip inch down your collarbones. The urge to cry was beaten out of you some moons ago; not by Baelor’s command, or even the king’s, but you were tortured for it nonetheless. This is what your lord husband doesn’t seem to understand — just because he has been nothing but kind to you, does not mean the rest of the world has been.
“There is plenty reason, Your Grace,” you tell him in an unfeeling monotone, moments before your nightgown pools around your bare feet with a quiet thud, leaving your form utterly bare and kissed by candlelight.
You try not to feel dirty when his hands are on you. You try not to think about how many people he’s killed with them — how many of your brothers and cousins died under his sword before they lost the war. You try not to think about how utterly gentle Baelor is with you despite such carnage, as he guides you slowly into the center of his bed.
His body is lean and muscular when it presses on top of yours, burying you further in the crimson silk and cashmere blankets below. You can feel every inch of him on top of you, and you hate it — you hate how much you like it.
His scruffy legs slot between yours before he pierces you with his long cock, of which you can feel every ridge and vein as he fucks slowly into you. You can feel the minimal pudge of his belly as it presses into yours, and his heart drumming wildly behind his hairy chest when he smothers your breasts against his sternum. His fingers are warm and calloused as they trace up your arms and wrists and palms, entwining with shorter ones and pressing them into the pillow on either side your head.
He’s in you, on you, and all over you.
It’s maddening.
So much so, that you struggle now to distract yourself as you normally would. Usually, you’d add up all the stars you could see through the window across the room, or the cracks in the cobbles in the ceiling. You lose count quickly now, though, through Baelor’s whispered grunts in your ear, which fan warm across your skin and leave chills pebbling in their wake.
“Gods,” you hear him grumble. “You feel so good around me—”
He buries all of his moans into your neck, as if he were ashamed of them; as if he were ashamed of how good he feels. Something about it makes your stomach swirl with a newfound warmth. You can feel it leaking out of you now, and drenching the sheets below. You can hear it, even — in the faint schlick, schlick, schlick sounds every time he punches into you.
Your hips jerk when the coarse hair above his cock presses harder against the most sensitive part of you. Your breath catches and leaves in a high-pitched yelp before you can stop it. You burn red-hot with embarrassment a second later.
“Sorry,” you squeak out, chest heaving. “I’m sorry.”
Baelor halts his thrusts and pulls his head back for the first time in several minutes. His brown-blue eyes are glassy and heavy-lidded; his scruffy face is flushed and glowing with sweat; his thin lips are rosier now from the sloppy kisses he’d pressed absentmindedly to your neck.
You didn’t know he was so beautiful before now.
“Don’t apologize,” he assures through panted breaths. He brushes a rogue hair from your temple and softens when you flinch on instinct, as though surprised by the sheer tenderness of his touch. “You can feel good, princess— It’s supposed to feel good.”
No, it’s not, you want to say. I shouldn’t like this. I shouldn’t like you.
“Do you want to keep going?” Baelor asks.
You nod wordlessly despite yourself; not because you’re his wife or his property but because, for the first time, you want to feel him.
You squeeze your eyes shut when his hips roll back again. You can still feel his stare on you when he pushes back into you, watching your features crumple under the sheer weight of your pleasure.
The pressure on your clit is unrelenting and only builds in time with the speed of his measured thrusts. A foreign feeling rises in the pit of your stomach accordingly, until you can feel yourself choking on it, like you’re moments away from bursting entirely.
“Stop—” you hear yourself say, though the word gets lost in a gasped breath. You repeat, louder this time, “Stop! Stop.”
Baelor abides without question. He stills on top of you as his pleasure-stricken features flood with panic almost instantly, worried he might’ve hurt you in some way.
“What?” he pants. “What is it?”
“It’s—” you start but cut yourself off a moment later, unsure of what to say, or why you had even stopped him in the first place. “It’s… It’s too much.”
“What is?”
You shake your head against the pillow, eyes wide and wild as they dance between his mismatched ones. “It feels… too good…”
Baelor exhales a heavy sigh of relief.
“Aye, my lady,” he nods with a quiet laugh. “It’s supposed to. I want it to feel good for you.”
You say nothing, just tighten your fingers around the ones still holding his.
“I can tell that it does. Feel good for you, I mean…” he confesses, voice low and melodic, as he tilts his hips back again. “You’re getting so much tighter around me—”
He clenches his jaw and grunts quietly when he pushes back into you. A quiet whine sounds in the back of your throat as your head jerks against the pillow, an involuntary motion spurred on by your pleasure.
“—Can barely move for how tight you’re squeezing me,” he moans through a breathy chuckle. His heavy eyes dart wildly over your blissful features, screwed together in a pained look that he knows is anything but. A lopsided smile quirks the edges of his mouth. “I think you’re already close for me, aren’t you, my lady? I think you’d cum for me the second I commanded it of you, wouldn’t you?”
You swallow hard, not trusting yourself to speak, or to otherwise form any intelligible turn of phrase. You hold tighter to his hands and clench your thighs around his hips, nodding wordlessly in response.
“Do it then,” Baelor tells you, so low it sounds almost like a growl. “Let me have it— Let me feel you.”
A squeal gets lost in your throat when his thrusts pick up speed again. The merciless pleasure begins to suffocate you, almost terrifyingly so. You couldn’t run from it now if you tried, not pressed beneath his body like this. The only thing you can do now is take it.
Baelor holds you while you cum, coos softly in your ear the entire way through the twitches of your orgasm: “That’s it,” he praises, choppy between his thrusts. “That’s it. So good for me— No, no, don’t stop— Give me all of it, sweet girl. Yes… That’s it…”
You’re left trembling beneath him as your high comes and goes. You hardly realize that you’ve slipped your hands out of his larger ones to wrap them around his pale shoulders — digging crescent shapes into the freckled skin, keeping him pressed impossibly close to your shuddering form.
You only vaguely feel his fingers on your buzzing skin as he wipes a tear from your temple that you hadn’t realized was there. You blink the burning haze from your eyes as you peer up at the man above you. Your heaving chest warms at the smile he gives you, quiet and utterly tender.
“See?” Baelor hums, petting you softly by the hair. “This doesn’t have to be all bad… We can be happy here, can’t we?”
The urge to cry wells suddenly in your throat. And it’s strange, because you don’t feel all that sad at the moment. Instead, you feel quite hopeful — for the first time since the war started, you finally feel like your life is one worth living.
“I don’t know…” you answer on an exhaled breath, leaning into his calloused hand when he presses it gently to your burning cheek. Your wet eyes dart back and forth between his brown-blue ones as you confess, “But I think I want to be…”