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They had married Daeron to a boy who was not yet a man.
The thought recurred to him with every slow beat of his heart as he stood by the window of the bedchamber, his forehead pressed against the cool glass. Outside, the rain had passed by midnight, leaving the Red Keep wrapped in a damp, salt-stung silence, but the cold remained.
It was the same gray numbness that always pooled in his limbs after the bad sleep—the kind where his eyes moved behind his lids and things burned that hadn't yet been built.
The weight of the ceremonial silks, crimson and thick with stiff gold embroidery, felt less like finery and more like a shroud. He was two and twenty, an omega whose blood had always felt like lukewarm water rather than fire. He was a prince whose only currency was the silence his father bought from the maesters.
And his husband, sitting at the edge of the high mattress behind him, still had roundness upon his freckled cheeks.
Valarr smelled of nothing but soap and perfume and the unpolished musk of a presentation that had barely settled into his bones. He had not yet learned the posturing of alphas, though he undoubtedly would soon. Stripped of his cloak, Baelor’s eldest son looked remarkably thin about the flanks, his dark hair sticking to the sheened skin of his temples. The boy was nervous, his hands gripping the sheets, his shoulders hunched slightly as if he were trying to steady himself.
"It's quiet now," Valarr said lowly. He wasn't looking at Daeron; his eyes were fixed on his own boots. "The crowd down there... did they bother you?”
Daeron didn't move from the glass. Yes. "No.”
"I’m glad," Valarr murmured, shifting his weight. The wool of his open shirt rustled. He finally looked up, his gaze lingering on the thin line of Daeron’s shoulders. "You didn't eat anything."
"My stomach was turning," Daeron replied, his voice dropping into that quiet, dry register that always made his family look right through him. "It usually does."
Valarr rose. His boots made no sound against the rug. When he stopped a pace before Daeron, his hand rose, tentative. His pale fingers hovered over the gold dragon clasp at Daeron’s throat, his fingertips careful as they brushed the skin of Daeron’s neck.
"Is this okay?" Valarr asked.
“It’s fine.”
Valarr swallowed and nodded, and Daeron stayed still. "The clasp is stuck," Valarr muttered, his fingers fumbling awkwardly with the enameled metal. His grip slipped, the gold clicking sharply against his ring. A dusting of red rose from his collar to his cheekbones. A boy they married him to. A boy.
"Let me," Daeron murmured, feeling kindly, his own hands rising.
Their fingers tangled—Daeron’s cool and Valarr’s warm like flat stones left too long in the sun. Together, they unfastened the metal, letting the garment slide from the omega’s shoulders to fall into a crumpled heap at their feet.
When Daeron stood there, stripped down to his thin linen shift, Valarr merely stared. His breath hitched in his throat, his queer eyes wide. A maiden then, just like me, Daeron thought, nearly said, but didn’t. Didn’t know how it would be taken. Did not want to risk it. There was silence for a moment, the boy breathing and staring, Daeron breathing and standing. Moved by a weary resolve, Daeron caught the hem of his shift, pulled it up and off, before tossing it aside into the shadows.
Even with the hearth roaring the air was chill, and his nipples pebbled against it. Then gooseflesh traveled lower, the draft tracing down his stomach to the folds of his cunt.
Valarr’s gaze dropped. The boy’s face flushed a deep crimson, his chest heaving as he took in the sight of Daeron bare before him. Valarr opened his mouth and tried to speak, but no sound came out save for some stuttering, and so he closed it, his face burning even hotter. Daeron wondered, for a brief second, if he should remain a maiden this night—if his boy husband could not look at him, surely he could not claim him—but then Daeron’s eyes flicked downward, noting the unmistakable twitch beneath the wool of Valarr’s trousers, and thought, just as quickly, never mind.
"You are beautiful," Valarr finally managed to choke out, his voice cracking slightly. Daeron pretended not to notice.
"Thank you," Daeron replied, for want of nothing else to say, and then, pointedly—for they would be here for hours surely without some bluntness—"Should we move to the bed?”
Valarr nodded quickly.
His hands, still slightly clumsy, reached for the laces of his shirt. He pulled the garment over his head, casting it to the floor. Stripped of it, his chest was smooth, the breadth of his shoulders slight. He reached down next, unbuckling his belt with fingers that were steadily growing nimbler before pushing his trousers and smallclothes down, until he kicked his boots and clothes aside as well.
Standing fully unclad in the dim light of the bedchamber, Valarr looked a little less like the boy now and more like the alpha he was bound to become. His manhood was full and proud, beading at the tip, almost angry looking in its redness.
“Daeron," Valarr said, but it was more of a beckon, and so Daeron stepped forward in order to close the distance between them.
As soon as Daeron was within reach, Valarr drew him in, gently putting his hands on Daeron’s shoulders and guiding the omega onto the bed, where the mattress swallowed them like loose earth.
Valarr laid him down as though he were a piece of glass, and then braced his weight on his forearms, his biceps trembling under the strain of keeping his body from smothering Daeron’s frame. His brown hair fell forward into his eyes, and Daeron had the urge to brush it away, so he did. In the next breath, there were lips against his own. And it was not bad, so Daeron kissed back. They kept kissing, slow and soft, until at last Valarr pulled away, his lips swollen, and confessed what Daeron already so dearly knew.
"I don't know what to do," Valarr breathed against the curve of Daeron’s neck, his hands finding their place around Daeron’s hips. "My father told me to be careful with you. He said you must always be careful with omegas.”
You should be careful with everyone, Daeron thought, but out loud he only said, "I won't break." His fingers found the span of Valarr’s shoulders, feeling the beginning of muscle forming beneath the skin.
Wanting to simply cross the threshold of the night, Daeron reached up. His fingers caught the back of Valarr’s neck, gentle but firm, and guided the boy’s head down toward his chest.
"Here," Daeron murmured.
Valarr didn't resist. His face pressed into the hollow of Daeron's collarbone, his warm breath puffing against the cool skin before his mouth drifted lower. When his lips found Daeron’s breast, testing the pebbled peak with a hesitant lap of his tongue, Daeron let out a soft sigh. Encouraged, Valarr closed his lips around the nipple, sucking gently. He drew the small peak into his mouth, his tongue swirling around it until it grew hot beneath the friction, an unexpected heat pooling between Daeron's thighs.
When Valarr finally pulled back, the nipple was left glistening and taut. Valarr looked at it, his eyes dark, and then leaned back down to press a soft kiss directly to the peak, as if trying to soothe the very ache he had just created.
Slowly, Valarr began to move downward. His nose brushed against the pale skin of Daeron’s ribs, a low rumble building in his throat every time Daeron’s stomach tightened beneath his touch. He kissed his way down the center of Daeron’s belly, a winding trail of damp warmth that made the omega's breath catch.
Just before he reached the junction of Daeron’s thighs, Valarr stopped. He hovered there, his knees settling on the mattress, staring down at the seam of Daeron's cunt.
"Is this okay?" Valarr breathed.
Daeron stared back at him. Is what okay? The question felt almost foreign. There was no room for permission in the laws of the realm. Yet, looking at the sheer earnestness in the boy's face, Daeron answered, "Yes. It's okay."
Valarr exhaled, a rough sound, and then leaned in. The first touch of his tongue against the folds of Daeron’s slick opening made him startle, but before he could tense, Valarr lapped at him—long, wet strokes, tentatively breaching him in and out—before his lips closed directly around Daeron’s bud, sucking with a soft, steady pressure.
An involuntary gasp escaped Daeron's lips, his hips lifting off the mattress as his head tilted back into the pillows. It was nearly dizzying, the contrast of Valarr's hot mouth against his chilled skin driving everything else from his mind. Amidst the sudden haze of pleasure, a dry, wondering thought flickered to the surface: Where does a boy who knows nothing of the marriage bed learn a thing like that? Surely Baelor hadn’t instructed his son on this particular art. Perhaps it was just the base, unpolished instinct of an alpha, buried deep beneath the soap and the manners, waking up the moment it sensed an omega's yielding.
Daeron was panting by the time Valarr pulled back, his mouth shiny and the smell coming off of him stronger now, heady. Daeron was not surprised when Valarr raised himself, gathering his manhood in his palm before pressing against Daeron’s entry. He didn't thrust blindly, for which Daeron was thankful. He paused, bracing his weight on his forearms once more, his jaw clenched as he slowly, carefully pushed himself inside.
The stretch was tight, a burning fullness that made Daeron wince, his hands flying to Valarr's shoulders.
"Daeron," Valarr strained, as he buried himself to the hilt. "Are you... did I—"
"I am fine," Daeron assured him, for it was a tolerable pain, his fingers digging only slightly into Valarr's flesh. "You may move."
And Valarr did. But the restraint had already cost him everything he had. He pulled back and pushed in again, twice, three times, his movements desperate and uncoordinated, worrying his bottom lip so hard it looked fit to burst. On the fourth stroke, a low, broken groan tore from the boy's throat. His body went rigid, his muscles locking tight as he spent himself inside Daeron with a shuddering heave, and in that exact second of release, Valarr lunged forward and bit down into the meat of Daeron's neck, his teeth sinking deep into the scent gland to claim him.
Daeron hissed, a sharp spike of white-hot pain lacing through him as the mark took hold.
Valarr collapsed forward after that, his body going slack, his face burying itself in the crook of Daeron’s neck where a bleeding bruise was already forming. Daeron blinked. It was over as quickly as it had begun. Daeron lay beneath the sweating length of his new husband, feeling the flushed press of the boy's cheek against his collarbone as he listened to the frantic thudding of Valarr's heart against his own ribs.
“Sorry,” Valarr whispered against his skin, and there was shame in it, but Daeron only hummed, his fingers gently tracking the line of Valarr’s spine. A boy. But they were wed now, and the bed was blooded, and Daeron knew, with a strange and quiet certainty, that they would survive each other.