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The sight of his wife smiling shouldn’t cause Valarr’s skin to prickle like it was, he didn’t think. Not when he was so well acquainted with her tears. The tears for their little ones, taken before they had ever had the chance to know them. The tears she shed when she missed her home, as alone as she often felt in Westeros, miles and miles from everything she had known before their marriage. 

The tears she had shed for his father. 

The prickling stopped, replaced with a wash of grief so cold that Valarr swore the tips of his fingers went numb. My armor, my father, my fault. He pushed his plate away from him, his appetite gone. 

What had happened wasn’t his fault. He knew it wasn’t. That did not stop the frigid, slimy sensation of guilt from settling low and heavy in his stomach.

Aerion was to blame, if anyone, for being the greatest fool their family had seen in this generation. And gods knew their family had no shortage of fools, now or in the past. 

Valarr reached over and grabbed Kiera’s hand, pressing an absentminded kiss to the back of it, her skin soft and perfumed. She turned to him slightly, offering a small, confused glance his way before carding their fingers together and rejoining her conversation with Maekar, who looked begrudgingly pleased to be speaking to her. 

Kiera had that effect on people, strange as they sometimes found her. She was light and color and warmth, Valarr had always thought. And if anyone felt more horrid than he did at present, it was Maekar. That there was any hint of... not happiness certainly, but levity, on his face as the family ate dinner was only a testament to just how potent Kiera’s smiles could be. 

Even Daeron had laughed once, deep in his cups as he was. Rhae and Daella seemed pleased to have another woman in Summerhall as well, and as they’d lost their mother so recently, Valarr was slightly reticent to suggest that he and Kiera flee in the dead of night as he’d like to. 

Valarr wasn’t even upset that Kiera was capable of smiling as she cajoled Maekar into another tale of his childhood in the Keep. She’d always been better than he had at shedding her grief. After their children had died in her womb, she had grieved– deeply, truly–, but she had been able to move past it far faster than Valarr. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that she was not so broken as he was following the death of his father. 

“How long do you mean to stay here?” a voice cut across the table, stalling Maekar’s voice and Kiera’s small laugh. 

Valarr’s lip curled as he turned to Aerion. They were only at Summerhall because Kiera had thought time with his family before they all traveled to King’s Landing would be good for Valarr. But in the two days they’d been here, watching his uncle’s and cousins’ wounds healing, he wasn’t certain the time together had done anything other than make his head pound.

“I’d think you more concerned with your departure on the morrow, cousin,” Valarr said.

Aerion’s head twitched slightly, and in the light of the sconces and candles, the bruising across his face looked dark as spilled wine across his pale skin. His hand tightened around the handle of the carving knife he held, and for a moment, Valarr thought he may dive across the table at him. 

“Aerion,” Maekar snapped. “Be quiet.” 

Valarr thought that may be the most Maekar had ever sought to curb Aerion’s worst impulses. A shame it had come so little and so late. 

“You’ll enjoy yourself in Essos,” Kiera said softly, and though her voice sounded sweet, Valarr could hear the small thread of taunting in it. Her smile widened when Aerion’s mouth went flat, her slightly upturned eyes glinting. “And we’ll enjoy ourselves more at Summerhall without you.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

The sharp, earthy smell of Kiera’s dyes met Valarr before he pushed into the bedchamber, finding her sitting on the floor in nothing more than a linen shift, her thick hair sectioned as she coated the strands in a pink paste. 

“Where are your maids?” he asked, dropping his sword belt onto a nearby chair. Time in the training yard had done little to help him bleed out his frustrations after dinner. 

Kiera glanced up at him, and in the firelight, she looked almost gilded gold, her brown skin catching the warmth of the flames. “I wished for time alone after dinner.”

He nodded, hating that his nose stung. His father would want him to be here, he knew. But Valarr wished to go to King’s Landing and then home to Dragonstone. To Matarys and the familiar rooms where he could pretend better that his father had not been taken from him far too soon. 

“Things will be better with Aerion gone,” Valarr finally said, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. “Move closer.”

Kiera nodded and slid over to him, passing her bowl of dye to him and dragging a towel with rags and combs piled on it with her. “Your fingers will be stained pink.”

“It fades.”

“We should dye your white streak,” Kiera said. She’d been saying the same thing since they married, but her voice was heavier now than it usually was when she jested with him. 

Valarr took a dry section of her hair into his hands, rubbing the strands between his fingers. When he’d first touched it, he’d been struck by the texture and how different it was from his own, coarse and so thick he couldn’t sink his fingers into her curls.

“Are you well?” he asked. A stupid question, he knew. One he needed to ask regardless. 

Her breath rushed out of her when Valarr stroked his fingers over her scalp, spreading the dye across the roots of her hair and down its lengths. “Are any of us?”

Though she couldn’t see him, Valarr shook his head and ducked down to press a kiss against her bare shoulder. Her skin was sweet with the scent of honeysuckle and warm against his lips. 

“We’re not,” Valarr said, straightening. His throat was tight as he continued to paint Kiera’s hair with the thick dye. “I am not.”

She knew he wasn’t, but it was the first time he’d truly admitted that he was struggling. And there was shame running through him because of the weakness. He was the heir of the heir. Simply the heir now. He had no time to struggle with grief. Not when he would be named Prince of Dragonstone and be given the responsibilities of the island. Not when the pressure to produce his own heir would soon mount again. 

Neither of them spoke, but Valarr heard a sniffle from Kiera as he continued to work through her hair, taking care to keep the dye from painting the skin of her neck and shoulders. There was something relaxing about the repetitive movements, the only sounds in the room their breathing and the crackling fire, cut through by the occasional call of a bird passing by in the night. 

After a while, Valarr could almost pretend that he wasn’t quite so miserable. He was simply sharing a moment with his wife in their chambers, the pressures waiting for him beyond the door not so terrifying. 

He finished coating her hair with dye, quietly braiding it against her scalp so that she could wrap it before bed. There were times when they both woke with pink streaking their skin after she dyed it, his chest and shoulders striped, her cheeks and neck covered in what looked like blooming flowers. 

Fitting, he thought distantly, wrapping her thick hair around itself. She’d brought color to his life with their marriage, though he’d not been unhappy before they’d wed. She was simply more than he was. Lighter and happier. Friendlier and sweeter and more outgoing than he’d ever achieved. 

He grabbed a rag from the floor, gently wiping away any dye that had found its way to the skin of her neck. 

“Turn around, Kiera,” Valarr said softly. 

She did as he bid, coming to her knees in front of him and letting him lift her chemise over her head, leaving her bare and lovely in front of him. He continued cleaning her skin, letting his fingers trace over the lines of her throat and shoulders, gently brushing over her collarbones and the swell of her breast. 

The bars of gold pierced through her nipples caught his eye, the red gems on them fracturing firelight across her skin. He’d never quite gotten past the shocked arousal that he’d felt the first time he’d seen them. Even after the years they’d been married, they stole his breath and made his stomach bottom out.

“Valarr–,” Kiera started, but he shook his head, not ready to speak quite yet. 

Instead, he grabbed the length of silk she wrapped her hair in when she slept, helping her fix the fabric around her head. In the morning, her maids would wash and oil her hair, and the pink would be vibrant against her brown skin and gold jewelry, and Valarr would count himself lucky to have her yet again. 

She laid her head against his thigh, staring up at him with dark eyes. He couldn’t read her thoughts, and he hoped that she couldn’t read his. Because they were miserable and terrified. Distressed in a way he’d never once experienced before. He kept remembering that Father was gone, and Valarr did not know how to be without him.

They stared at one another in silence as Kiera’s hand started gently rubbing over Valarr’s thigh in a small show of comfort. He trailed his gaze over her face, taking in her dark almond shaped eyes and plump lips and flat nose. Someday, he hoped to see a child of their own with her features. With her laugh and her ability to move past heavy things so well.

And though Valarr was still heartbroken, his wife was bared before him, gracing her touch up and down the length of his thigh, softly turning her head to gently kiss his other leg. It should shame him, surely, that he felt himself harden in his trousers, his stomach tightening with arousal instead of grief for the first time in nearly a week. But he could only cup her jaw in his hand, his chest aching when she pressed a kiss to the center of his palm. 

“Kiera,” Valarr murmured when she undid the ties of his trousers and pulled them open.

She pulled his trousers down further, tapping his side until he lifted his hips and let her slide them off of his legs. “Sagon lyka, valzȳrys.”

The Tyroshi tongue was a strange, lilting version of High Valyrian, but Valarr could understand the words well enough to recognize that she had bid him to keep quiet. She smiled when he nodded down at her, straightening as she drew his cock from his pants and lowered her mouth. 

Valarr hissed out a breath between his teeth when her tongue met the head of his cock, the pleasure from the touch edging out the dark shadows that had occupied his thoughts for days. He curled the hand around the back of her head, wishing that her hair was loose and not wrapped in dye and silk.

Her mouth closed around his cock, her tongue hot and flat against the length as she lowered her head, staring up at him all the while. Valarr groaned when her fingers wrapped around his base, his hand twitching against her head. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he said, his head falling back. She was not grieving less than he was. She and his father had respected one another a great deal. Baelor often spoke of her with fondness, as though she was the daughter he had not been granted. 

Kiera pulled back, licking over the head of his cock once more. “I said to be quiet.”

“You say a great many things.”

“Listen to them. You might be happier.”

Valarr helped Kiera to her feet, banding his hands around her waist. “When do I not listen to you, wife?”

Kiera slid her hands up his neck, tangling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. “Now, for one.” She pushed at him until he shifted back enough that she could climb into his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. “I cannot help you in any way that matters, Valarr.” She kissed the side of his neck, and he felt the hot slide of her tears against his skin. “I can do this for you. Offer you this comfort.”

“You do not need to comfort me,” Valarr muttered against the side of her head, running his hand up the length of her back, feeling the little bumps of her spine beneath her skin. 

“Of course I do,” she argued, her eyes flashing. “As you should comfort me.”

“And this is how you wish to be comforted?”

“Lay back,” Kiera said instead of answering. “Take off your tunic.”

Valarr drew it up over his head and laid against the mattress, rubbing his hands absentmindedly over Kiera’s thighs as she sat above him. He trailed his fingers up her thigh, until he met the soft curls between legs and the wetness hidden there. A soft breath fell off of Kiera’s lips when he pressed his fingers against her clit, her head tilting forward slightly. 

She’d never been loud when they found themselves like this, which Valarr had always been amused by, as outgoing as she was everywhere else in her life. Still, he had become acquainted enough with the little signs of her pleasure. The quiet whimpers and sweet sighs, the way she went slightly stiff when she neared her peak, her mouth falling open.  

Her eyes closed, her face slightly pinched as he pushed two fingers inside of her, his thumb moving in gentle circles against her clit. Another soft breath, almost a moan, met Valarr’s ears, and her hips rocked against his fingers. The sight of her above him was nearly enough to make Valarr forget that anything in his life was amiss, and he supposed she had known that would be the case. 

She had always valued closeness, for as long as he had known her. Physical or otherwise, Kiera craved connection above much else. And Valarr tried very hard to not deny her that. If she sought to comfort him by lying with him– if she sought to be comforted by lying with him– Valarr would let her do as she pleased and follow her commands until they were both sated. 

Above him, Kiera fell forward, her hands landing hot against Valarr’s stomach. She bit down on her bottom lip so hard that color leached from it, a whimper dying in her throat when Valarr pushed his thumb more firmly against her, moving his fingers faster inside of her cunt. 

Her back went tight and her mouth fell open as her pleasure peaked, a quiet moan the only sound she made as her hips rocked against Valarr’s hand. She let herself fall against him, pressing kisses against his jaw and cheeks over and over, her breathing slowly evening again. 

“Lovely,” he murmured, pulling her mouth down to his. 

Kiera’s tongue brushed against the seam of his lips, meeting his before she pulled back and nipped at his bottom lip, smiling against his mouth when he huffed. 

Valarr’s hands found her hips, rocking her over where he was hard and eager for her. “Lovely and insolent.”

“And yours,” Kiera whispered, kissing him again. 

And his. 

She pushed up and reached between them, her lip between her teeth as she sank down onto his cock, stealing any thoughts he might have had with the hot clasp of her body. Bracing herself with her hands on Valarr’s chest, Kiera ground her hips against him, both of them gasping at the movement. 

Valarr gripped her hip with one hand, gripping so tightly that her skin dimpled beneath his fingers, little divots forming in the plush flesh of her hips. He lifted the other to her breast, thumbing at her stiff nipple. She whimpered when he flicked her piercing, her eyes blown wide, so lovely and warm as they met his that he was struck by gratitude for his wife. For all that he knew this moment would help Kiera move past the grief she was feeling, she had commanded him to his back as a sort of gift to him as well. 

So often, Valarr felt overwhelmed by the expectations that people had of him. He was a prince’s son. The Hand’s son. The heir’s son. Descended from a king and meant to be king in his own right one day. He was meant to be an example to his own brother and his cousins and the entirety of the realm.

He needed to fight harder in the training yard. Study harder with the maesters. Be more honorable and determined and shrewd than any of his peers. And by and large, he was. But that was stifling, in its own way. 

Now, though, with his wife atop him, that washed away. He could scarcely remember his worries when Kiera gasped his name, her accent stretching the word in a way that made his stomach tighten. Very little mattered, other than how wet Kiera was when Valarr slid his hand from her hip to her cunt, his fingers pressing to her clit and making her shudder. 

Kiera’s cunt tightened around him when she came again, her hands curling into fists against Valarr’s chest. She continued moving her over him, soft whines catching in her throat all the while. Valarr thrust his hips up to meet her when she finally stilled, chasing his own release, which he could feel budding hot and insistent behind his navel. 

He pulled her against him when he spilled inside of her, pressing kisses to the side of her face as he groaned and rolled them onto their sides. If the gods were kind– which Valarr did not truly think they were– perhaps they would be blessed with a child. Or if nothing else, this might make them rest easy for the first time in days. 

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Adventure was in short supply at Summerhall, Kiera was finding.

Valarr had been gone this morning when she’d woken, and she knew that he was with Maekar, seeing Aerion off. Daella had accompanied them and Rhae was in lessons until the afternoon, a maid had told Kiera. And while both were a fair bit younger than Kiera, she rather desperately wanted someone to converse with in the largely unfamiliar halls. She often felt the same on Dragonstone and in King’s Landing, though there, she at least had Valarr and Matarys to speak with when the court sent strange looks her way. 

Kiera wandered the halls now, knowing that there was no one to keep her company but wishing she might find someone regardless. She was bored, yes, but more, she was lonely. As she often was. As she nearly always was. 

Because even if she adored Valarr, they each had parts of themselves that the other could not understand. He did not understand how she often felt displaced and unwanted in her new home anymore than she could understand the panic and pressure he felt at being the future king. He was a darling of the court. A darling of his parents and his grandfather and nearly all who met him, charming and strong and handsome as he was. 

Kiera was... an amusement, more than a person to the nobles of Westeros, she thought. An oddity in many ways, with her bright hair and foreign clothes. And perhaps if she was more willing to conform to Westeros’ fashions, the looks would stop. But the thought of losing a connection to her home was rather like a blade to the chest, sharp and aching whenever it crossed her mind. 

She paused in front of what she thought was the library door, her footsteps ceasing to echo off of the high walls of the hallway. Truthfully, she was not much for reading the histories and religious texts that she assumed were housed in the room, but she had nowhere else to be, so she pushed the heavy door open, padding her way in. 

“Oh!” she exclaimed as the door shut behind her, surprise making her back go straight. 

On a couch in the middle of the room lay Daeron, his arm slung over his eyes, one leg hanging lazily off the side of the couch. On the floor at his side was an abandoned flask, the leather worn from use. Daeron shifted slightly when he heard her enter, lifting his arm just enough to see who it was. 

Kiera tilted her head at him, wondering if he was sober enough to even stand and greet her. She wasn’t certain they’d ever actually spoken with one another alone, now that she thought about it. Looking at him, she realized she had little opinion about him other than thinking his drunken ramblings were odd. He seemed fairly mild mannered when he was sober, if nothing else. And his siblings were fond of him, which she always thought boded well.

He pushed up as she walked closer, though he didn’t stand. “Lady Kiera,” he said, his voice slightly scratchy.

She lowered herself into a seat across from him, the beaded fringe that decorated her skirts rustling as she sat. The vessels in his eye had burst during the Trial, and the dark red of blood was discomforting enough to look at that Kiera stared somewhere over his shoulder rather than look at it. “You may well just call me Kiera.”

“Then you may call me Daeron.” His eyes closed and his head fell back against the couch with a small thump.

The sound nearly caused Kiera to laugh, though she bit down on her lip to keep it from escaping. She wasn’t quite as successful at keeping herself from laughing when he seemed to remember that his flask was lying on the floor and he began to kick haphazardly at it until it disappeared beneath the couch. Daeron’s cheeks went slightly red when she giggled, and the sight was so endearing that she wanted to laugh more.

She smiled, playing with one of her gold rings. “You did not wish to say goodbye to your brother?”

“I’d never see him again if I had a say, Kiera,” Daeron said. His voice lowered, like he was speaking to himself instead of to her. “Idiot.”

“Even Valarr went to see him off.”

“Ever the perfect princeling, that one.”

Kiera’s back stiffened slightly at the words, said with just enough reproach to be an insult. “Better a perfect princeling than a drunkard, don’t you think?”

She regretted the insult as soon as she spoke, even if she’d meant it to some degree. He didn’t even seem drunk at the moment, so much as she thought he may be nursing a sore head. And she did not know why he seemed so content on drowning himself in his wine, throwing it in his face likely wasn’t her place. 

But Daeron only lifted his head slightly, his eyes open into little slits. “Not a single person would think otherwise, my lady.” 

Kiera bit down on the inside of her lip as his head fell back against the couch. Her words ran from her far less as an adult than they had as a child. Still, there were moments when her mouth moved faster than her mind, and she said things she ought not to. “That was unkind of me.”

Daeron shrugged. “It is not as though I didn’t deserve it. Or as though it isn’t true. Defend your husband all you wish.”

“He’s not often in need of defending,” Kiera said. 

“He never has been.”

She looked over Daeron, realizing that his clothes were slightly wrinkled, his hair washed but certainly unkempt, the brown strands tangled. Had he slept here, she wondered, trying to hide from his father and whatever responsibilities may be bestowed upon him?

“Have you?” she asked without meaning to.

Daeron sat up, finally, his brows raised. “Needed to be defended? Certainly not. I’m guilty of everything of which I’ve been accused.”

“Everything seems excessive, Daeron.”

“Most everything, then,” he said, sounding almost like he was teasing her.

And though he’d been somewhat prickly since she found her way here, Kiera smiled at the tone of his voice. “That’s far more reasonable.”

So quickly that Kiera almost missed it, Daeron’s eyes flashed with something that looked happy, and the emotion was so different from what she usually saw on his face that it shocked her. He was handsome when he smiled, she realized. It was a shame he so often looked miserable.

“Do you miss Tyrosh?” he asked suddenly. A silly question if Kiera had ever heard one.

Of course I do. “Do you miss your mother?”

She saw the answer across his face, though he didn’t speak aloud. Of course I do. 

He nodded. “It’s hard? Being so far from your home, I mean.”

Kiera chewed on her lip. “I am… very often out of place, I think,” she settled on saying, the words far less and far more than she’d like to admit to.

“That would make two of us, then,” Daeron said.

In Kiera’s chest, she felt her heart begin to scramble like a rabid animal, desperate to find someone who understood. Her throat felt tight when she spoke, a familiar hope that she should have culled long before now blooming inside her. “You think so?”

“Not in the same way, maybe,” he said, not meeting her eye. “But enough.”

“The court dislikes me. They find me odd.” Her words were rushing out of her, now that she’d shared some of her discontent. “They think me unfit to be a queen.”

Daeron’s expression sobered. “They find me unfit to be a prince, Kiera. Though they’re far more correct in that regard.”

That was hardly a compliment, but Kiera flushed with pleasure regardless. “You do not know me well enough to say.”

“I know enough,” Daeron said, his eyes drifting closed again. “The realm could do worse than a kind, happy queen. Her homeland be damned.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

“Daeron, if you pour more wine, I’ll dump the fucking jug over your head.”

Daeron cast his eyes up at the ceiling as Daella giggled at Father’s reprimand, his head pounding. With no small amount of regret, he let go of the handle of the silver jug, abandoning it and his cup both on the side table beside him. He’d gone too long without drinking, and visions and the ache of the alcohol wearing off had caused a pressure between his eyes that would only be released when he drank himself to sleep.

“Yes, Father,” he muttered, praying that Rhae would finish her admittedly poor harp playing sooner rather than later. He didn’t care that she was still a child, the notes were so grating he thought he may pass out before he had the opportunity to find himself more to drink. 

When he had first turned to drink in a futile attempt to quiet his thoughts and suppress his dreams, it had been enough to drink himself to sleep at night. His mind would go blank for a blessed while, and even when he’d wake with a hammer and chisel driving between his eyes, he’d thought it worth the pain when he did not have to watch dying dragons and fire and gods knew what else as he slept. 

At some point, drinking just at night hadn’t become enough, and between his body’s cravings and his mind’s refusal to be silent, Daeron and drink had become synonymous.  

And now, with all of his brothers gone, Father’s attention was turned to Daeron, which Daeron thought regrettable for them both. Gods willing, Father would be distracted when they made their travel to King’s Landing in a few day’s time, and Daeron would be able to find his way to a pub in the city and hide in a corner for weeks. 

Daella poorly smothered another laugh at Daeron’s unenthusiastic answer, giggling when he swatted a hand at her. “Quiet, pest.”

A discordant shriek rang from Rhae’s harp, making Daeron flinch. 

“Hush!” Rhae snapped, far too impertinent for how little she was. “I am not finished! So do not speak!”

From the corner of his eye, Daeron saw Father’s eyes close for a split second, exhaustion and irritation carved into every line of his face. “Pay attention to your sister. Rhae, continue.”

Daella bit down on her lip to keep from snickering again, poking the toe of her shoe against Daeron’s. And though his head ached, being chastised as though they were children made Daeron wish to laugh too. He could almost pretend that the last week had not happened at all for a moment. That he’d not made a great deal of mistakes that he wished he could drink away. That their family had not been dealt a blow they were not likely to ever recover from. 

Rhae struck another wrong note, making Father’s eye twitch and sending Daella and Daeron’s shoulders shaking again. Daella turned her head towards her lap and cast her eyes sideways at Daeron. “Why are Valarr and Kiera free from musical torture?”

The mention of Valarr sent a familiar bitterness through Daeron, on its heels, the sound of Kiera calling him a drunkard and promptly apologizing for it. He shook the thoughts off. They weren’t important, no matter how much he’d liked speaking to Kiera earlier in the day. He shrugged. “They’re guests.”

“And we’re prisoners?” 

Daeron looked at Rhae, her silver hair twisted into a braided crown, her face pinched in concentration as she played. “Not Father’s,” Daeron said, tilting his chin toward her and watching with satisfaction as Daella grinned. “Rhae’s.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

“Has Father told you how long he means to stay here?” Daella asked, her legs swinging as she watched Daeron pour himself more of the wine that Father had barred him from.

Daeron took a long drink, his shoulders loosening at the familiar taste. “No more than a week, now that Aerion is gone.”

“I don’t think he wants to see Grandfather.”

Neither did Daeron, truly. “Would you?”

Daella shook her head, frowning. “I suppose not, no.”

They fell into silence, and while Daeron loved his sisters, he wasn’t certain why Daella was lingering. Surely she had something more entertaining to do than watch Daeron try to drink himself to death.  

“Your face looks horrid, by the way,” Daella said after a moment.

Daeron nodded, pouring more wine. The jug was nearly empty, unfortunately. He’d need to go find more, as there wasn’t nearly enough to bowl him over. 

“Have you let the maesters look at it again? I don’t think it should be so red.”

“They’ve given me a poultice.”

“And have you used it?”

Daeron looked at Daella, finding that her brow was raised. “I’ve not not used it.”

“Do you wish for it to scar?” she asked. “You’ll look like a beggar, more than a prince.”

“I don’t look much like a prince regardless, sister.”

Daella rolled her eyes, pulling her braid over one shoulder. The two of them had the same coloring, with their light brown hair and pale eyes, but she looked much more the part of royal than Daeron tended to, even without the silver hair the rest of their siblings had. 

“And whose fault might that be?”

Daeron snorted. “I never claimed that it was anyone’s but my own.”

Her voice quieted slightly, like she wasn’t certain she should speak her thoughts aloud. “I worry for you, Daeron.”

His hand tensed on the stem of his goblet, guilt making his skin burn. “You don’t need to.”

Daella’s mouth pinched, and she looked so much like their mother that Daeron’s chest ached. She shook her head and looked away, crossing her arms over her chest. He let his head fall over the back of his chair, regretting that she fretted over him. Regretting more that he knew he wouldn’t change. For now, though, he placed his cup aside, pretending it didn’t feel like an insurmountable task to not take another draw of his wine. 

“Was Aerion very angry?” he asked, trying to distract Daella. 

Her mouth was still screwed up, and he suspected that she knew what he was doing, but she nodded. “I thought he would hiss at Father when he was told he didn’t get to ride his own mount.”

“Father’s already lost track of too many sons to risk it again,” Daeron said, laughing. 

“It’s not funny, Daeron!” Daella exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. “You’re all idiots. Aemon is the only one of you with any sense.”

“And I’m quite certain Father regrets letting him become a maester every day.”

Daella kicked her foot out at him, though she was too far away to reach his leg. “Father should have gone to Essos. He needs a break from fool sons.”

Daeron laughed. “And leave us here with Aerion? With me in command of Summerhall in his stead? He’d come home to even more disaster.”

His words were meant to be a jest, but they were true. Daeron was not what he should be as the eldest, so much as he was a disappointment to anyone who expected anything of him. More often than not he failed at wrangling his siblings and supporting his father and doing anything other than sourcing himself his next drink. It was a mercy he would never become king, he thought suddenly, for himself and the entire fucking realm. 

Suddenly, the door opened, and as if Daeron’s thoughts had summoned him, Valarr stepped inside, tall and straight backed, looking the part of prince as he always did, even in a plain black and red doublet. Daeron’s mouth pressed flat as Valarr stood in the doorway, his face lined with exhaustion. 

Though Valarr was several years younger than Daeron, he had always been more. The perfect heir. The perfect eldest son. Valarr was everything that Daeron should have been, truly. A help to his father, learned and staid and honorable. He was everything Daeron might have been, if his dreams had not rotted his mind with fear and stolen any sense he’d ever had. 

But, then, perhaps that was only an excuse. Who was to say that Daeron could not still be a great prince, no matter what visions haunted him when he closed his eyes? Perhaps he was simply too weak to be any more than he was. 

Valarr’s gaze flicked between Daeron and Daella, his hands folded respectably behind his back. “Kiera wishes for you to join us for dinner.”

“Daeron or me?” Daella asked, her brows furrowed. 

Daeron didn’t move, but he watched Valarr’s eyes linger on him just a moment too long. His square jaw ticced, and Daeron couldn’t help the sharp satisfaction that rose at the sight of it. 

“Both,” Valarr lied, still looking at Daeron. 

Strangely, Daeron found himself rather thrilled to be the reason that his cousin abandoned his honesty. He grinned, his heart beating too quickly when Valarr’s eyes narrowed. Excitement, for the first time in gods knew how long. “I’d love to come.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Kiera didn’t think that she liked Daeron’s company when he was drunk nearly as much as she’d enjoyed it that morning. Which didn’t come as a surprise, so much as a disappointment as he slumped down in his seat, his loose hair falling over his face like a curtain. 

Beneath the table, Valarr’s fingers gripped hers so tightly that she could feel her bones pressing together. Occasionally, he tensed when Daella said something in a paltry attempt to keep conversation flowing. Over the past half hour, her husband had hardly spoken, and Daeron had done little more than call for more wine until his eyes were hazy and far away. 

When Kiera had suggested that Daeron take dinner with them, she hadn’t expected the flash of… anger, it might have been, across Valarr’s face. Nor had she expected the stiffness of his spine and the harsh set of his jaw that plagued him now. 

Daella cleared her throat and pushed away from the table, her necklace catching the light of the candles that lit the room. “Thank you for the invitation, cousins,” she said. “I think Daeron and I should take our leave. 

“Oh no,” Daeron said, a small smile tugging at his mouth, his words slightly slurred. “I’ll stay.”

A flash of worry crossed Daella’s face, but she leaned down and kissed Daeron’s cheek before whispering something to him that Kiera couldn’t catch. So quickly that Kiera almost missed it, his expression went earnest and sad. He nodded at Daella as she straightened, her brows still furrowed. With another wave, Daella rushed from the room, leaving the three of them alone in a tense, awkward silence. 

Kiera lifted her fork to her mouth, glancing at Valarr. He was staring across the table at Daeron, a look on his face that she wasn’t certain she’d seen before. She was even less certain that she could guess what it might be. 

“Valarr?” she whispered, tugging on his hand. 

He flinched, as if he’d forgotten that she was even at his side. The reaction was so unlike him that her brows rose, regret burning its way up her throat. She’d liked speaking with Daeron this morning, but now that he’d downed enough wine to drown a small island, she did not think him nearly as affable as she had in the library. And Valarr was more tense than she’d seen since his father’s funeral, looking as though he was ready to pull a blade.

“Your husband dislikes me, Kiera,” Daeron said from across the table, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Thinks me mad.” He laughed, but there was no happiness in it. “Can’t fucking stand me.”

Valarr’s hand tightened around Kiera’s again. “I’ve never said that, Daeron.”

Daeron didn’t take his hands from his face, but his fingers flexed. Once. Twice. A third time, a disbelieving laugh echoing through the room. “Neither has my father.”

But the meaning was clear, with Maekar’s stiff spine and perpetual glare. Kiera glanced at Valarr, her brows knitted together. There was something she was missing clearly, with how the air had gone tense. 

Daeron looked up at Valarr finally, his eyes fevered in a way that made Kiera’s back go straight, as if bracing for something terrible. “I dreamed of a great dragon felled, cousin,” he said, reaching again for his cup and grimacing. 

“Daeron, don’t,” Valarr started, further confusing Kiera. 

“It came true, of course,” Daeron continued, pushing from his chair. He stumbled when he stood, and Kiera instinctively lifted out a hand to steady him, even knowing that she’d not be able to reach him across the table. “And I’ve dreamed more since we’ve been here. Godsforsaken fucking dreams, cousin.”

Valarr shook his head, and Kiera bit down on her tongue, too scared to speak and break whatever it was that was building between the two men as they stared at one another.

“More dragons fallen,” Daeron said, his head falling to the side. “Younger ones, taken by a black fog.” He straightened again, throwing the last of his wine back. “And I’ll not be able to stop it.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

“What did Daeron mean?” Kiera asked, her voice shattering the quiet in the dark room. The only indication she had that Valarr was even awake was his hand cupping her bare breast, his thumb absentmindedly fiddling with the bar of gold in her nipple. The touch wasn’t meant to arouse, she knew. She wasn’t even certain that he was aware he was doing it as they lay together in bed or if he simply needed something to fidget with. 

Sometimes when he was thinking in the middle of the night, his hand stole beneath whatever she was wearing to bed to toy with the bars as he was doing now. She preferred it to when he would press his palm against her still flat stomach, the touch reminding her that she’d been unable yet to give him an heir. He’d not ever say anything about their lost children, but she knew he mourned them. And she heard the whispers at court, calling her unfit for the realm’s prince when she’d failed to deliver their children whole and hale.

Valarr’s fingers stilled for a moment before beginning their fiddling again, slightly harder this time. “Nothing he says has any meaning. Think nothing of it.”

Kiera frowned. The words were harsher than she was used to from him, and she could hear the tension in his voice, like even he didn’t believe what he’d said. “Valarr.”

Behind her, he huffed and kissed the base of her neck. “What, Kiera?”

“Why did he speak of dreams the way he did?” Kiera wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with Daeron’s ramblings. But there had been something strange in what he’d said tonight, she thought. 

A long, tense moment passed, and Kiera thought that Valarr wouldn’t answer. The air between them stretched taut and uncomfortable, and it was so unlike their usual ease that Kiera felt a familiar panic creep up her spine. She could bear the court thinking her odd or overwhelming and giving her the cold shoulder, if only barely. She could not bear such a thing from her husband.

“There are those in our family that have dreamed of great things,” he said finally, another deep sigh ruffling the curls that had escaped around the edge of Kiera’s silk scarf. “Daenys saw the fall of Valyria, many years ago. Saved our entire line.”

Kiera nodded. She’d heard the story from his family before. And there was magic enough in the world, she didn’t think she agreed with the slight thread of disbelief in her husband’s words. “And is Daeron the same?”

Valarr went silent again, his fingers still moving restlessly against her piercing. “No one has treated him as though he is.”

A frown pulled at Kiera’s mouth. She remembered Daeron’s voice in the library that morning, telling her that he very often felt out of place. A terrible thing, to not be believed at all, regardless of whether the dreams were real or not. Worse if they were.

“We were closer when we were younger, you know.”

“What?” Kiera asked, Valarr’s voice startling her out of her thoughts. 

“We would spend our summers in the woods here,” he whispered. “Pretending that we might find a dragon egg or hatchling at the base of a tree or on the bank of the fishing pond.” Valarr paused, and Kiera hissed out a breath between her teeth when his fingers suddenly pinched. Low in his throat, he made a little sound of regret, kissing the back of her neck again in apology. “I hoped for a long while that we might find one in truth. Even knowing that they were gone.”

Kiera swallowed, something settling heavy and uncomfortable in her belly. “Why, Valarr?” She did not think that the answer was so simple as Valarr being young, still blinded by the wonder of childhood. 

His forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, hot against her bare skin. “He said he dreamed of dragons, even then. I wanted it to mean something, as a child.”

They fell into silence, and around them, the dark felt nearly suffocating. Kiera swallowed, her hand twisting into the sheets. “And now?”

“I don’t know. Maekar thinks him a fool. My father did not speak of it.”

Which was why Kiera had not heard of the dreams before now, she supposed. A thought occurred to her then, that made her chest tighten uncomfortably. “And was the... was the dragon he saw your father?” 

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I never know.”

After a long moment, she swallowed. “I like him. When he’s not soused.”

Valarr sighed again. Tired, she thought. Begrudging. A kiss landed against her cheek, Valarr’s lips trailing across her jaw and down her throat. “He’ll drink himself to death.” Valarr’s voice went quiet and brittle when he buried his face in her neck. “I’ve no wish to see it.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

A sharp ache had taken up between Valarr’s eyes since he’d woken, speaking to how poorly his sleep had been following the strange dinner he’d shared with Daeron and Kiera. And now that he sat taking breakfast with his family, he distantly wondered if driving a knife into his ear would be more or less bearable than listening to Rhae complain about her septa. 

It was a small comfort that Daeron seemed to be sharing his thoughts, his head buried in his arms atop the table, the only sign of life from him the slight rise and fall of his shoulders. His cousin was the reason he’d been unable to find much rest the night before, talk of dragons dying wrapping with Valarr’s grief to the point that his eyes had snapped open each time his body tried to drift to sleep. 

“We’ll leave for King’s Landing in four days' time,” Maekar said, his fingers tensing on the table top. “Your grandsire has called us home.”

Daeron didn’t answer, and Valarr watched Makear’s eye twitch. Maekar’s pale gaze landed on Valarr, grief flashing across his face so quickly that Valarr would have missed it, had he not felt the same each time he looked at Maekar. Valarr looked like his father, he knew, and Maekar had been the one to land the killing blow. They’d never again be able to look upon the other without feeling as though they were being suffocated. 

“He sent a raven for you, Valarr,” Maekar said. “It’s in my study after you’ve eaten.”

Valarr had little wish to know what Grandfather might say to him in the wake of Father’s death, but he nodded and muttered his thanks. A weight settled on his shoulders at the thought of what Grandfather had written. While Grandfather had been quiet at the funeral, Valarr was to be heir now, and though he’d long shadowed his father, he did not think he was prepared as he needed to be. 

Was he to be Hand now, in Father’s stead? Did he want to be, even? As young and untried as he felt despite his desperate attempts to seem steady and learned and worthy of all that his titles came with? 

A soft touch on his hand halted his thoughts, and he turned to find Kiera looking at him with her brows furrowed. “All will be well,” she murmured, just quietly enough for him to hear.

He nodded, not yet trusting his voice. Across the table, Valarr saw Daeron straighten, his eyes too sharp for how drunk Valarr had just thought him. Their eyes met, and low and heavy in Valarr’s stomach, something like dread bloomed. Younger ones, Valarr heard echo in his mind, sending a chill through him. Daeron looked like he might weep as he passed a hand over his face, breaking the spell between the two of them, the sight of it making Valarr’s nose sting in kind. 

𖤓𖤓𖤓

The letter had been sparser than Valarr expected, but that had done little to alleviate his burgeoning panic. Grandfather hadn’t commanded that he would be Hand in writing, though Valarr supposed he could still be given the title once he was home. Grandfather had written of naming Valarr Prince of Dragonstone after a public period of mourning for Father. 

But Valarr did not wish to mourn with the public. He wished for Father to not have been struck down before his time. He wished for him to have worn his own armor, though it may have done nothing more than Valarr’s against Maekar’s strike. There was nothing to have been done, he knew. He simply hated the fact. 

Valarr caught the attention of a servant in the hall as she passed. “Do you know where my wife may be?”

The young woman dipped her head, hesitating briefly. “I just left her in the solar, my prince.”

Valarr raised his brows as she shuffled away from him, confused about why she seemed to be wary of telling him where Kiera was. He’d put it from his mind by the time he found his own way to the solar, but as he moved to open the door, he heard laughter from within. Kiera’s familiar giggle reached through the door, sweet and clear, followed by a laugh he hadn’t heard in years, lower and far less exuberant than Kiera’s. 

He paused with his hand on the knob, listening to the shuffling of feet and another round of laughter, uncertain what he would find when he pushed inside. Valarr opened the door after another minute of confusion. Within, Kiera and Daeron were in the center of the room, the furniture that was usually arranged neatly inside pushed haphazardly to the side.

Kiera smiled when she saw him, and for a moment, he was blinded enough by it that he didn’t notice the way she held Daeron’s hand in hers, lifted between them. She dropped Daeron’s hand at whatever she saw on his face, but the action was not guilty— not that Valarr would have accused her of something that garnered such a thing. 

“The letter?” she asked. 

“It was nothing,” Valarr said, moving slowly to a chair that had been pushed away from its regular spot, his eyes bouncing between Kiera and Daeron. Daeron looked more alert than Valarr had seen him in days, and when Daeron met Valarr’s gaze, the tips of his cheekbones flushed slightly. 

“What have I interrupted, exactly?” Valarr asked slowly.

Kiera’s smile reappeared and she held her hand out for Daeron again, wiggling her fingers until he took them in his own. “Daeron’s acting as my dance partner, husband.” 

“A poor one?” Valarr asked, not quite meaning to let the words out. He felt strange at the sight of the two of them together, especially with Kiera’s smile wider than it had been in a week. 

Daeron only snorted. “Do you remember when your mother tried to teach me the branle?”

Valarr blinked, strangely caught off guard by the question. Valarr couldn’t have been more than eight when it had happened, Daeron perhaps one and ten. Mother hadn’t yet tried to teach Valarr and Matarys the stormland’s dances, and on a visit to Summerhall, she’d turned her attention to Daeron and Aemon. “You were terrible at it. Even for a child.”

“I’ve not improved much since then.”

“Nonsense!” Kiera said, the beads that hung from the hem of her dress clinking together as she swung her foot impatiently. “You only needed a Tyroshi style.” She looked at Valarr again, and her face was so excited that he could ignore the strange sensation in his chest as he watched her with Daeron. “He’s done quite well. And he’s far more willing to learn than you’ve been.”

“That may be the first time I’ve ever bested your husband in anything,” Daeron muttered. 

Kiera’s nose wrinkled slightly as she sent a confused look to Valarr. They’d never spoken of whatever relationship existed between him and Daeron beyond what he’d told her the night before, because Valarr himself didn’t like to think of the way his cousin made him feel angry and petty. He shook his head, and though Kiera would certainly demand answers from him later, she took it with nothing more than a flattening of her mouth. 

“Dancing has never been my strength, Kiera,” Valarr said, slightly stiff. He danced with her at feasts, but it had never been something he had much excelled at, and because of it, it had never been something he had much enjoyed. 

“Well,” she said, drawing out the word. “You’ve interrupted us. And if you don’t mean to join, leave us be.”

Valarr bit down on the inside of his cheek, not certain that he wished to see Daeron dance with his wife. Still, he raised his hands in surrender, not willing to pull Kiera from a moment she was obviously enjoying. “Continue, then.”

Daeron sent a suspicious look towards Valarr, but Valarr only settled back in his seat, raising his brows in challenge. Part of him expected Daeron to leave. His cousin did nothing if not run from things. 

Kiera tilted her head at Valarr, but she nodded slowly, tugging on Daeron’s hand to draw his attention back to her. “Like this.”

She began a dance that Valarr was only vaguely familiar with, having watched her own family and friends from Tyrosh do the jumping footwork the day he and Kiera had married. The court had watched them, slightly affronted by the unfamiliarity and the volume of their laughter, slightly scandalized by the way the women had lifted their skirts above their ankles to more easily cross their feet as they held hands with another person.  

“No one in Westeros knows how to do this,” Kiera complained, a small exclamation of praise following the words when Daeron followed her steps. “The last time I saw it done well was at our wedding, Valarr.”

Valarr felt a small stab of regret. She missed her home, and there was little he could do to alleviate it. He nodded, watching them continue their dance. 

Daeron was far less graceful than Kiera as she pulled him across the rug, stumbling into the steps where Kiera bounced her weight from one foot to the other. But despite how poorly he was doing, both of them were grinning, and Valarr was suddenly struck by the thought that he didn’t know the last time that he’d seen a smile so wide on Daeron’s face. 

Kiera let out a delighted shriek when Daeron spun her under his arm, her pink hair flying out around her shoulders, her stacks of gold bracelets tinkling with the movement. Daeron’s laugh was rusty, almost, as though it had been a long while since it had been practiced in full. Valarr couldn’t help but smile, even as the sight of Kiera beaming up at Daeron made a strange heat burrow under his skin. 

Not quite jealousy, he didn’t think. Not when Daeron’s smile was similarly bright, a welcome sight when the entire family had been miserable for days. Not when the heat didn’t prickle and sting so much as it just warmed him all over, making him overly aware of where his collar scratched against the base of his throat. 

Kiera jumped again, pulling Daeron with her. She held her flowing skirts in her other hand, glimpses of bare legs flashing as she moved.  “Are you certain you don’t wish to join us?” she laughed, a little breathless.

Valarr shook his head.

“Unlikely,” Daeron said before Valarr could answer. He caught Kiera with a small grunt when her foot caught on the rug and sent her falling against him. He helped straighten her, nodding his head when she smiled at him. When he let her go, Valarr saw his hands flex at his sides before he folded them behind his back. “Best to wait until I’ve left.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

“Kiera does not often speak of Tyrosh with others.” 

Daeron stopped walking and turned back to Valarr, sitting in the same chair he’d watched Kiera and Daeron dance from. Though Daeron thought Valarr had tried to hide it, he could hear the resentment in his voice. 

Kiera had left only moments ago, saying that she’d told Rhae that she would dye a strip of her hair. Daeron hoped that Father had been told about it beforehand, lest it be what finally led him to an apoplexy. A daughter with striped hair would either be nothing or what sent Father over the edge fully after the week they’d had, and Daeron wasn’t certain which. 

“She told me a great deal about it,” Daeron said, uncertain if he wished to step back towards Valarr or not. He’d not say aloud that Valarr’s words pleased him. Kiera rather delighted him, with her shining jewelry and eyes and smiles. That he’d somehow earned a secret of sorts from her made his heart give a harsh, heavy beat that he’d not acknowledge.

Valarr tilted his head to the side, and from where Daeron stood across the room, he heard the crack of his neck. “I’m glad.”

“Well, I don’t believe that, Valarr, really.”

Just as it had the night before, Valarr’s face flashed with something dark and frustrated. And again, seeing it made a thrill shoot up Daeron’s spine. He shouldn’t be so satisfied to cause Valarr’s perfect facade to break, but each time he saw the cracks begin, he wanted to make them worse. 

“It’s polite to pretend,” Valarr said, his jaw slightly tensed. “You know that as well as I do.”

Daeron crossed the room again, throwing himself into a seat beside Valarr, not wishing to look him in the eye. “I’m not interested in pretending.”

“You’re interested in nothing other than wine and whores, Daeron,” Valarr snapped, and Daeron’s brows rose.

He wasn’t much interested in whores, really, so much as he was interested in the distraction they could provide from his dreams, but he doubted Valarr would wish to talk about the semantics of his self-destruction. Daeron turned his head to look at Valarr, finding that he was staring straight forward, his hands clenched on the arms of his chair. 

“A blessing I’m not the heir, then, isn’t it?” In the ear that had been hit during the Trial, a shrill ringing started. It had been happening on and off for days, and Daeron shook his head, trying to will the sound away. 

“Can you do nothing other than feel sorry for yourself?”

“I never claimed I wished to be the heir,” Daeron said, suspecting that Valarr wasn’t speaking about him at all. “Though it seems you may be nursing some wounds yourself.”

Valarr’s jaw clenched again and he shook his head.

“You just dislike me, then,” Daeron guessed, knowing that Valarr had a great deal of things to be upset about at present, offering himself as a target instead. “And that’s the reason for your poor mood.”

“Damn it all, Daeron, I’ve never once claimed that I dislike you!” Valarr burst out, finally turning in his seat. 

Daeron raised a single brow, biting back a smile when Valarr’s eyes narrowed. Any levity he felt left him the longer he looked at Valarr, though, a familiar sadness panging in his chest. He’d once liked spending time with Valarr more than anyone else. “We were friends as children.”

The memories hung between them, a familiar ache making itself known in Daeron’s chest. They were friends once, and now they could scarcely talk without snapping at one another. Daeron’s dreams had started in truth and his mind had slipped, and Valarr had been unwilling or unable to continue a friendship with him, another person to disbelieve him. 

Daeron would not blame his family for how they looked down on him, but there were moments, when he woke in the middle of the night with the smell of death and smoke choking him, that he wished very much that one of them would simply believe him and offer him some semblance of comfort.  

Valarr lifted his hand, and briefly, Daeron thought that he would be hit. With a heavy sigh, Valarr shoved his hands against his eyes with a heavy sigh. “I resent you, cousin,” he confessed, low and angry. “Very often.”

Daeron supposed that should rankle more than it did. Truly though, the words only confused him. “Hmm.”

Valarr’s eyes shot to Daeron at the hum, gone slightly wider. “Not you. But...,” his voice trailed off. “You.”

Daeron snorted, letting his head fall over the chair’s back. “Well spoken.”

He didn’t think that Valarr would continue after that. He shut his eyes, expecting the scrape of chair legs against the floor, followed by steps, stiff and measured as they always were. The sound of a door slamming, or more likely, clicking closed gently, as Daeron did not think Valarr ever truly lost his temper, even as lost in his grief as he was at present. 

He only heard another sigh, far more broken than the first, as though Valarr was quickly losing his patience. “You spoke of it yourself,” Valarr’s voice came quietly. “You’ve never bested me in anything.”

Daeron opened one eye to find Valarr staring at the rug. “And that’s what you resent?”

“Gods, no.” Valarr rubbed his hands over his face again. “You do... nothing. And you’re a fool.”

Despite the insult, Daeron snickered, so confused about the point that Valarr was trying to make he all at once forgot that he’d been seeking to provoke him. “Valarr, what the fuck are you saying?”

“I’m exhausted, Daeron.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “And I am lost without my father.” 

“That has very little to do with me, cousin,” Daeron said, trying to keep his voice as gentle as he could. He had no desire to be cruel, when Valarr’s face clouded so quickly with grief that Daeron could feel it in his chest. 

“You think it strange that I dislike watching you do nothing but drown yourself in drink and hide away from your father and anything he may ask of you with no repercussions?” 

“Dislike it all you wish. Why you should resent me for it is another matter.”

Valarr shook his head, a short laugh falling off of his lips. “It makes me petty.”

“Then be petty, Valarr,” Daeron said. “Gods know you could do with a flaw.”

At Daeron’s words, Valarr’s shoulders slumped, his usually straight spine seeming to lose all of its strength in a split second. Daeron bit down on the inside of his cheek. For all that he resented Valarr for being what Daeron was not, seeing him brought low was not nearly so satisfying as he once might have thought. 

“That’s just it,” Valarr muttered. “I can’t.”

“And who’s told you as much?”

Finally, Valarr looked up at him, his brows slightly pinched. “It doesn’t matter if I’ve been told. I’m the fucking heir, Daeron. If I had time to make mistakes and act a fool, it’s passed long before now.”

Daeron nodded slowly, understanding dawning over him. He supposed he’d resent himself if he was in Valarr’s position as well. Watching someone who was by all means meant to be his peer drink and whore and run from any responsibilities asked of him would be... tiring, at the very least. 

“You have Matarys to lean on, do you not?” Daeron asked slowly, not certain he had any comfort to offer Valarr. 

“Matarys is a child. I’d let him be one as long as possible.”

Matarys was hardly younger than Valarr himself, but Daeron understood the desire to shield him. He’d tried his hardest to be there for his siblings. To protect them from what he could, when he could, even when that meant against each other. And while he’d often failed, he’d always thought his one success was that he knew they trusted him.  

He was a fool and a disappointment, no doubt. And likely not Valarr’s equal in anything else, but in this, perhaps they were not so dissimilar. In his chest, something went warm, though he’d not try to give it a name. 

Daeron wished suddenly that he was a more eloquent man. That he had some assurance or comfort to offer Valarr when his face was so lined with exhaustion. But he had nothing to say to ease the weight that was so obviously pushing down on him. And he feared that anything he said would only be a lie, with the things he’d seen coming rapidly for their family. 

He pushed to his feet, meaning to leave Valarr sitting alone with his resentment and his worries. As he moved to step past Valarr, he hesitated, his throat tight. Without letting himself think, Daeron paused, placing his hand silently upon Valarr’s shoulder. Through his tunic, the heat of his body sank into Daeron’s palm. 

“Your father was proud of you, Valarr,” Daeron said, the only thing he thought he could say that would be true. He tightened his grip, like he could press the truth of his words into Valarr. Under his hand, Valarr’s shoulders shook, a silent sob shuddering through him. “He’d be proud of what you’ve yet to do.”

Valarr didn’t respond, his head bowed as his shoulders shook again. Now that the first cry had escaped him, he seemed unable to stop. Without speaking, he lifted his hand, laying it atop Daeron’s. Their fingers didn’t quite fold together, but Valarr’s skin was startling hot as he grasped at Daeron, his shoulders shaking again. 

This was all the comfort he would take, Daeron thought. All the comfort that Daeron could give. Daeron’s eyes stung as he and Valarr refused to look at one another, each pretending that they were not drowning in their own way. 

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Every time Kiera brushed through Rhae’s hair, Rhae giggled, her face so alight with joy that Kiera couldn’t help but smile as she sectioned her hair. Rhae’s hair was long and straight, silky enough that the strands slipped against one another and fell each time Kiera tried to place a lock somewhere. She wasn’t certain how exactly she was going to keep her dye neat, especially when Rhae wiggled in her seat again.

“You’re sure that your father said this is fine?” Kiera asked, giving up with hair pins and just starting to braid Rhae’s hair to the side, leaving a lock of hair out close to her hairline.

Kiera likely should have asked Maekar herself, but it was too late now. She’d ask for forgiveness if she needed, they were far past the point of begging permission.

Rhae nodded, her face fixed into false innocence. “Of course!”

From the bed where Daella was lounging, a little laugh echoed. “You’re a terrible liar, Rhae! Did you even ask him?”

“I did!” Rhae protested. Her voice dropped. “When he was reading his letters.”

Daella laughed again. “Then you know he didn’t hear you!”

Rhae’s mouth curled, and she looked up at Kiera in the mirror. “He never told me no.”

“I’ve said the same about Valarr, sweetling,” Kiera said, tying her braid off with a length of ribbon. 

She’d mixed her dye together before coming to meet Rhae and Daella in Rhae’s rooms, and it sat in a red clay bowl on the vanity, beside a tiny glass bottle with a shockingly bright liquid inside. Kiera dared not ask what it might be, having heard of Rhae’s supposed tendency for slipping things into drinks. For all she knew, the bottle was nothing more than a child’s game, and she rather hoped that was all it was. 

With another brush through the section of hair she’d left out of Rhae’s braid and another excited shiver from Rhae herself, Kiera finally reached for her dye. Dipping her fingers into the bowl was familiar. So commonplace that she let her mind wander as she coated Rhae’s hair in dye, listening to her and Daella chatter. 

Kiera heard her name, but it took a moment for her to break from her haze, blinking when Daella called for her again.

“Oh, yes?”

Daella was laid across Rhae’s bed in her stomach, her chin propped on her arms. “Was it strange being betrothed to Valarr? I think Father means to betrothe me soon, now that my name day has passed.”

Kiera’s hands stalled. As much as she loved Valarr, the news of her betrothal hadn’t been happy. She’d been terrified, reluctant to leave her home, and far more than wary that her new, unfamiliar husband would be cruel or dismissive or think her strange. The day her father had told her she was to marry Valarr and live in Westeros, Kiera snuck into her sister Asadora’s bedchamber and cried until she’d fallen asleep from exhaustion. 

“I was…,” her voice trailed off. Talking of Tyrosh was difficult for her, very often, with how much she missed her home. The ease with which she’d shared things with Daeron earlier had surprised her, but doing so had made her happy. “Strange, yes. Valarr was kind to me, though. But you were betrothed to Aegon, were you not?”

Daella giggled. “There were talks of it, is all.” In the mirror Kiera saw her smile go sly as she pushed up onto her elbows. “They were abandoned nearly as soon as Rhae decided she wished to play sorceress.”

“Daella, hush!” Before Kiera could stop her, Rhae had picked up a brush from her vanity and spun around, flinging it haphazardly toward her bed.

“Be careful!” Kiera yelped, Rhae’s dyed hair slipping from her hand and slapping against Rhae’s cheek. She sighed, giving up for a moment when Rhae jolted at the streak of wet hair hitting her.

“Look what you did!” Rhae said.

“What I did?” Daella laughed. “You’re the one who threw a brush at me.”

Rhae spun back around, muttering to herself. “You deserved it.”

Kiera stifled her laugh and reached for a rag, wiping her fingers before trying to clean the dye from Rhae’s pale skin. “You’ll be stained for a few days, I’m afraid.”

Maekar may not ever let Kiera visit Summerhall again, she thought, amused. She finished coating the length of Rhae’s hair, thinking that she felt almost like she was with her own sisters again, coating their thick, curly hair in dye, laughing as they teased one another. 

“Are you certain you don’t wish to do the same to your hair?” Kiera asked Daella, twisting Rhae’s dyed hair on top of her head and pinning it away from her face.

“I think I’d look ridiculous,” Daella said, smiling. “The pink wouldn’t be as pretty against my skin as it is against yours.”

Kiera laughed, thinking that perhaps she could talk Daella into a pale purple or a maroon. She thought it a shame that Maekar may not let her back after he saw that she’d dyed Rhae’s hair pink. She was rather fond of his children now that Aerion was gone.

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Whatever had happened after Kiera left Valarr and Daeron alone in the solar that afternoon seemed to have ruined both of their moods. She and the girls had arrived for dinner just moments ago, the air in the dining room tense and cold. Valarr and Daeron were sitting alone but seemed to be purposefully looking anywhere other than at each other. 

Daeron was visibly drunk, and he looked up at her as she sat. He muttered something to her in High Valyrian, and though she understood some of the language, his words were so slurred that she could only make out that he’d said something about a daughter. A chill went up her back at the way his eyes looked nothing short of tortured. 

Valarr, already stiff and red eyed at her side, went even stiffer, a frustrated, angry sound dying in his throat.

She was saved from answering as Maekar entered the room. His steps faltered when he saw Rhae, her cheek and hair a matching, vivid pink, even in the candle light and sconces. He slid his eyes to Kiera, then back to Rhae, and then to Daeron, who had tilted his head back to get the last of the wine in his cup before pouring more. 

Maekar dragged a hand down his face and sat, and Kiera felt a brief stab of guilt for her part in it as he waved a hand for the servants to bring dinner in. Valarr made no move to reach for any of the platters, and Kiera wondered what exactly had happened since she’d seen him last.

More often than not, he made sure that both her and his plates were laden with food at meals. But now, he sat staring forward somewhere over Daella’s shoulder, his hands firmly beneath the table. With a sigh, Kiera placed cuts of meat and rolls on both of their plates, before reaching over to touch his arm. 

Rhae and Daella were chattering at Maekar now, and Daeron seemed to have little concern other than how much wine he could drink while they sat here. Kiera spared him another glance, disliking the pallor of his skin. He’d been somewhat unsteady on his feet when they had danced together earlier, but he was aware enough to speak with her, at least. The sight of him out of his mind was unpleasant, she thought. Sad, more than anything else. 

“What’s amiss, Valarr?” she whispered. 

He turned to her, his eyes tired as he tried to smile. “Nothing more than you already know.”

Kiera was growing weary of her husband never breaking, she thought to herself. Of him pretending that all was well and that he was perfectly capable of facing all that came to him with a stiff upper lip. Because she knew that he wasn’t. No one was, and she wanted rather desperately for him to finally acknowledge the fact. 

She smiled and nodded, ignoring the prickle of discomfort that climbed over her skin at being shut out by him. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, so much as it was him attempting to be whatever he thought he must to be perfect and staid and steady as always. But Kiera still disliked it, wanting to support him through the delusion that he could pretend he was fine.

By the time dinner had ended, there was a stone in Kiera’s stomach. Watching Valarr look close to tears and Daeron drinking himself stupid while they refused to look at one another had killed her appetite far before dessert had been brought in. 

Maekar caught her attention as she and Valarr left the room, and she waved Valarr off, falling back into step with Maekar as everyone else left the room. A servant was half dragging, half supporting Daeron up the hall, and the sight made Kiera’s stomach churn a bit. 

“The hair was you, I presume?” Maekar asked, offering her his arm. He looked none too pleased, she thought, her cheeks warming at the threat of being reprimanded. 

“Why would you think such a thing?” Kiera teased, her voice less steady than she would have liked. 

A tiny smile, if it could even be called that, flashed on Maekar’s face. “It’s just as likely that Rhae went into your rooms and took your things.”

“But?”

“There’d be far more dye on her skin if she’d done so.”

Kiera nodded, relieved. “It will wash out in weeks. No more than three, I don’t think.”

Maekar shook his head. “It doesn’t signify,” he said. Kiera thought that he sounded tired, and she thought that the strain in his voice reminded her of Daeron. “She’s pleased with it.”

“I was happy to share it with her.” Even if she’d had to mediate a surprising amount of bickering between Daella and Rhae while they’d waited for the dye to set. 

A heavy sigh came from Maekar, edged with exhaustion and the grief that had so obviously settled heavy and persistent upon his shoulders. “I cannot... denying them things has become harder,” he confessed. 

Since Dyanna had died, Kiera imagined he meant. Since these last weeks, in which they’d lost Baelor and sent Aerion away. That was likely why Aegon had been allowed to roam the realm with a hedge knight, if Maekar no longer found himself able to disappoint his children. 

She stepped away from him when they reached a staircase, dropping into a small curtsey. “Best not to let them know that, I think. They’re already little beasts.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

After nearly an hour of watching Valarr in the training yard, Kiera was even more convinced that something had happened with him after she’d left him and Daeron in the solar the day before. When she’d finished her conversation with Maekar after last night’s dinner, Valarr had been in their rooms with his shoulders slumped and his eyes distant. Asking him to speak with her again when they’d woken this morning had proven to be a moot point, and she suspected that he was going to continue practicing sword play in an attempt to avoid her and her prying. 

Valarr and the knight he was sparring with were both wearing leather practice armor, though Kiera wondered if it did much against the flat side of a sword when Valarr slammed his blade hard enough against the knight’s side that the slapping sound rang across the yard. She rolled her eyes and pushed off of the ledge she was leaning over, watching as Valarr swung his sword again. 

Handsome and strong as he was, she couldn’t quite find enjoyment in watching him when she thought he likely needed to weep more than he needed to chase a fight. She could find Daeron and see if he was more forthcoming, she supposed. But she was coming to realize that she couldn’t be sure if he would be too deep in his cups to speak or not. Her nose wrinkled as she recalled watching him be corralled out of the dining room the night before, his eyes half closed, his fingers clenched at his side like he thought he was still holding a goblet. 

She walked back into Summerall, twisting one of her rings around her fingers nervously, trying to piece together what may have put Valarr in such a mood. She glanced down at her ring, her heart aching slightly at the sight of the small purple cowrie shell set into the gold band. Her mother had given it to her before she’d married Valarr, a little reminder of home to carry with her. 

Feeling as though she was not in control of her body, her steps stopped. All at once, she wished that she could be home with her sisters, combing the beaches for shells, the sun beating down on them. The beaches of Dragonstone were not like the ones she had grown up on, with their warm waters and white sands. On Dragonstone, the sea was craggy and choppy, the water itself seeming as dim as the cliffs it beat against. 

Any shells Kiera chanced upon were often battered before they washed ashore, their soft pinks dirtied and run through with cracks. In Tyrosh, the beaches by her family’s home were always littered with pink and orange fan shells. White cowrie shells as long as her thumb and jingle shells that sparkled like glass. She and her siblings had spent hours splashing in the surf and searching for shells, only returning home as the sun set, proud to show their findings to their parents.

So, so, badly, she wanted to go home. She wanted to let Mother braid her hair and let her sisters rifle through her jewelry. She wanted a hug from her father, his strong arms pressing slightly too tight around her. 

Biting down on her cheek hard enough that it stung, Kiera let herself think of her siblings, a luxury she very rarely granted herself anymore. She was the oldest of the five, though Asadora had only been born a year after her. They had been the closest, and years later when Serelle and Orina were born, they had fallen into chasing after the twins as they’d toddled through the halls. 

Terrio had only been a toddler when she’d left for Westeros, her father’s long desired son coming as a surprise to him and the rest of the family years after the girls. Kiera often found herself missing her sisters, but she mourned her brother, because she would never know him as she had known the girls. 

The thought that he would grow up with little more than a vague image of her in his mind made her chest ache. Very often, she didn’t let herself think of him at all. It had been years since she’d even seen Terrio. His cheeks had likely lost the roundness of infancy by now, his words far clearer than they would have been when she’d last bid him goodbye. 

Her nose stung as thoughts of her family assailed her. She did her best to keep her mind far from how homesick she was. Allowing herself to indulge in such a thing only reminded her how lonely she often felt. But it was far harder to keep her heart from yearning from home whenever Valarr pulled away from her, even when she knew she wasn’t at fault for the distance. 

He missed Baelor, and it made him prickly and closed off. She missed Baelor, with his soft voice and easy smile. Even more than Valarr’s, Baelor’s keen eyes saw when others looked askance at her, and though he never spoke of it, she knew that he ensured courtiers who disliked Kiera were never near her. 

What was she to do now that she had one less person to shield her in a sea of people who thought she was strange and unworthy of their prince? With nothing to buffer her and Valarr from the criticisms of her that she knew swirled through the Keep, would he come to believe them as so much of the court did? She didn’t believe that he would ever take a mistress, but would he come to resent her for the fact that she couldn’t seem to give him a child? 

Kiera was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice footsteps approaching her until someone called her name, making her jump. She blinked as she looked up, her brain struggling to let go of its homesickness and sadness over Baelor. 

Daeron stood in front of her, Rhae on his back, her arms wrapped around his neck. She grinned at Kiera, the pink splotch on her cheek only slightly faded. 

“Are you well?” Daeron asked, hiking Rhae further up on his back.

Kiera blinked rapidly again, feeling at a loss for words. It was so unlike her that her cheeks burned, tears prickling at her eyes. She wondered suddenly if she’d been so focused on supporting Valarr through the loss of his father that she’d pushed some of her own grief away. Baelor’s death, while she’d pretended it hadn’t, had reminded her again of her lost babies. Of the panic of having to leave her family. Of how awful things sometimes felt at court, and that they would no doubt be worse once she returned. 

Daeron slipped Rhae off of his back, his brows slightly furrowed. “Kiera?”

Her mouth opened and closed once, her voice still strangely too far out of her reach. 

He looked down at Rhae. “Go tell Father of our adventures, yes?” he said, giving his sister a smile. When her face scrunched up in distaste, he gave her a soft push on her shoulder. “Go, pest.”

With a roll of her eyes and a wave to Kiera, Rhae rushed up the hall, her little slippers slapping against the stone floor. Kiera watched her disappear in a flash of purple silk, her throat still tight. 

Daeron turned to Kiera again, taking a little step forward. “What are you doing?”

Kiera finally jolted, caught off guard by the softness of Daeron’s voice. She wasn’t certain she’d ever heard him speak so gently. “Thinking of the return to King’s Landing,” she lied. 

Or maybe it wasn’t a lie, really. It just wasn’t the whole truth, either.

Daeron nodded slowly, clearly not believing her, even as he offered Kiera his arm. “Dreading it?”

Kiera slipped her arm through his. The faint smell of wine clung to him, though she thought his mind didn’t seem as addled as it often did. Truth be told, she was shocked that he was even walking after how much she’d seen him drink the night before. In his tunic’s pocket, she could see the outline of his flask. “Something of the sort.”

“I am,” he said.

She smiled, but when she laughed, the sound came out more like a sob. Daeron patted Kiera’s hand awkwardly, making another pathetic half-laugh fall from her lips. As much as his siblings seemed to love him, she didn’t think he’d ever a good nursemaid make. 

He nodded again when she didn’t speak. “I’ll take you to your rooms?”

“Please,” Kiera murmured, letting him pull her up the hall. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as they walked in silence, wanting little more than to sit in her mother’s sunroom and listen to waves crash against the beach. 

“Has something happened?” 

She shook her head, thumbing at the underside of the ring on her pointer finger. “Did you and Valarr speak after I left you yesterday?” she asked. 

“Did he say that we had?”

That wasn’t an answer, Kiera thought. Which meant that Daeron would be just as likely to hide whatever must have taken place as Valarr was. “No. I had only wondered.”

“I left not long after you did,” Daeron said, but his voice was just tight enough that she thought it likely he was lying through his teeth. She had no room to call him on it, as she’d just done the same. 

Kiera clicked her tongue, and she saw his head whip towards her at the sound. His brows were raised when she turned to look at him, letting go of his arm and pausing on the stair above him. 

He tilted his head back slightly to meet her gaze, the smallest smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Again, she thought it a shame he smiled so rarely. If he was not so fond of drink and addled by whatever it was he dreamed of, he may be nearly as charming as Valarr. As it was, his skin was slightly pale and waxy looking, the circles under his eyes dark and deep. But beneath it all, he was handsome. And sweet when he was able to do more than slur at her. 

“You do not believe me, my lady?” he asked, a thread of teasing in the words. 

There was still a stinging in her nose, but she found herself immensely grateful that he would give her a reason to forget it. She tipped her chin up, her smile only slightly wobbly when she forced it onto her mouth. “I most certainly do not.”

“I’m trustworthy.”

Kiera’s brows hiked halfway up her forehead. She’d heard of exactly what had led up to the Trial, Daeron and Aerion and Aegon’s actions alike. Despite the fledgling affection she had for Daeron, she wasn’t certain she’d call him trustworthy as he presently was. She hummed, the sound noncommittal and disbelieving. 

A wide smile spread across Daeron’s mouth, and even with the dark shadows under his eyes, it rather lit his face. “Smart to not believe me, Kiera, that was a lie.”

Finally, Kiera forgot the dread she felt at going back to King’s Landing, her earlier thoughts sloughing off of her as amusement took their place. “You’re a fool,” she laughed, taking his arm when he offered it again. 

“As I’ve been told,” Daeron said. 

“And what will this fool do once we’re in the city?”

Daeron swallowed, his throat working. “Avoid Grandfather to the best of my abilities, most likely.”

They were nearing Kiera and Valarr’s rooms now, and she felt a small stab of regret that their conversation would be cut short. “I would like if you spend some time with Valarr and myself.” 

Daeron’s mouth flattened as they reached her door. “I doubt that your husband has any wish to see me. Now or in King’s Landing.”

Which only made her think again that something had happened after she’d left them in the solar. “Perhaps we’ll see each other elsewhere, then.”

“Perhaps.”

Kiera frowned at his lackluster answer. She thought they could be friends in truth, if given the chance. And she so badly wanted friends. 

“I rather enjoy our visits, Daeron,” she said without thinking. “Far more when you’re sober enough to speak with me, of course.”

Daeron gave her a self depreciating smile. “As do I.”

She could see his thoughts flitting behind his eyes, and she wondered what exactly it was that he wanted to say. I’d implore you not to raise your hopes, she could hear him saying. You’ll only be another person I disappoint.

But as much as she thought he believed his words, as much as she believed them in some part, she was finding herself rather fond of him. And she liked him more for the fact that he’d so easily given her a distraction from her darkening thoughts when he’d found her in the hall. 

Suddenly, his fingers brushed the side of her neck, making Kiera jolt. A line of heat shot down her spine, stealing her ability to speak. As quickly as he’d touched her, his hand dropped. 

“Your hair was caught in your necklace,” he explained, his voice low and tight. “I’ll leave you be now.”

Kiera blinked after him as he turned and walked away without another word, shocked and strangely guilty at the way that she could still feel the shape of his fingers on her throat. 

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Once again, Valarr was finding the sight of Kiera’s smiles somewhat... disquieting. 

Less because he was drowning in grief, this time. More because of who was causing her to smile as she was, so lovely that she seemed to glow a bit in the sun, her hair and jewelry and teeth catching the light. Her dangling earrings sparkled when she tilted her head at Daeron, the little pink gems in them brushing against her jaw. 

He’d gifted the earrings to her a year after they’d married, and he tended to rather like the sight of her wearing his gifts. Now, he found himself cataloguing the stacks of gold she wore, strangely focused on finding each bit that he’d given her. With her giggling at Daeron as she was, Valarr found himself somewhat determined to remind himself that he was the one who had draped her in a wedding cloak and gold. 

There was nothing short of torture that would ever make Valarr admit that he was jealous, —and of Daeron of all people— but he was uncomfortably, glaringly aware of the way his chest had gone hot and tight as he watched them walk ahead of him through the woods that surrounded Summerhall. And it was made worse by the fact that he’d broken so fully in front of his cousin only a day before, his sorrow finally reaching its breaking point as they’d sat awkwardly in the solar. 

He could still feel Daeron’s hand on his shoulder, heavy and warm like a branding iron. Valarr shrugged his shoulders without meaning to, like his body was trying to shake off the sensation of Daeron’s touch. Last night as he and Kiera had laid in bed, she’d skimmed her hand over the same spot, and it had taken everything in Valarr not to flinch as her fingers pressed against his bare skin. 

The maelstrom of emotions that had taken up in his stomach were threatening to make him sick. In part because he couldn’t name them. He only knew that he was terrified of returning home in a few day’s time and that there was a hot prickle between his shoulder blades when he watched Daeron and Kiera share another smile. Everything else made very little sense, and feeling as out of control as he did was certain to make his head pound. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rhae reappear on the walking path that wound through the woods, her white and pink dress stark against the trees. She fell into step beside Valarr, looking up at him, her brows slightly raised. 

“You’re glaring,” she said. 

Valarr cast his eyes up at the sky. Why was it that Maekar and Dyanna had created the most infuriating brood of children to ever grace the earth? The only ones among them that didn’t cause Valarr’s head to ache were Aemon and Daella. 

“I’ve nothing to glare about, cousin.” Valarr had lied a great deal more in the past two days than he normally did. He wasn’t going to think about why, when most of the lies had revolved around the same person. 

She brushed her long, pale hair behind her shoulder, the move haughtier than Valarr thought she should be capable of at her age. “Then stop.”

From ahead, Kiera laughed again, her head tilted back, her loose curls falling in a vibrant curtain against the blue silk of her dress. His chest tightened. It wasn’t often, if ever, that he found himself envious of Daeron, but he was envious now, thinking of how easily he made others grin when he put his mind to it. Valarr was often too staid to do the same, more focused on being his father’s shadow than he was on jesting with others. 

“Why don’t you go look for more flowers in the trees?” Valarr suggested, tearing his eyes away from Kiera. Rhae had a handful of bush vetch and marjoram blooms fisted at her side, and he hoped that the lure of more would make her leave before she continued needling at him. 

“There are more at the pond than in the trees,” Rhae said. She flicked her eyes up at him again, the purple of them nearly the same shade as her vetches. “You haven’t stopped glaring.”

Valarr couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up his throat, and after a week of nothing but grief and anger, that he could laugh at all shocked him. Kiera whipped around to look at him, Daeron glancing over his shoulder as well. Valarr wouldn’t look at Daeron, too embarrassed at having broken in front of him, but he gave Kiera a small smile, her own widening.

She turned back to Daeron, though she glanced over her shoulder again more than once as they approached the pond. Valarr looked down at Rhae again, who was still staring up at him expectantly. 

“Are you angry with Daeron?” she asked. “Father looks just like that when one of the boys annoys him.”

“Not at you, though?” Valarr asked, raising a brow. She was as much of a hellion as Egg, though nowhere near as unhinged as Aerion. He had little doubt that she tested Maekar in her own way. 

Rhae smiled, slightly chagrined when she reached up to touch the pink splotch on her cheek. “Less than the boys.” She rushed forward when they reached the end of the walking path, the fishing pond appearing in their view. 

There was an ache in Valarr’s chest when he saw the pond, surrounded by reeds and cattails and a smattering of wildflowers. He hadn’t been here in years, but it was the same as it had always been when he’d visited Summerhall as a child and come here with his cousins and Matarys. 

For a moment, as he watched Daeron break away from Kiera, he saw a younger version of him framed by the green trees and blue waters. In Valarr’s mind, Daeron’s eyes were less tired, his face not marred with a wound. And in this vision, there was a smile on Daeron’s mouth as he whispered to Valarr that he’d dreamed again of a dragon, and that surely they should search the rockmounds and the treeline until they found it. 

There was regret tightening his throat, that they should have grown so apart in the years since then. That resentment should have grown the way it did, until looking upon Daeron now often made Valarr feel anger’s heat flushing across his cheeks. 

He had loved Daeron, he thought, watching as he followed Rhae around the bank. They’d been friends for most of their childhood, and had spent hours and hours in one another’s company, sharing confidences and hopes and fears. 

Valarr wondered suddenly if his bitterness was not solely because he thought Daeron a fool with no care for his responsibilities, but if he felt that he had been abandoned in some way. He had surely not been the only person who had been hurt by the way Daeron’s dreams so fully had the better of him. 

But perhaps he hoped that he would have been... more than the dreams, in Daeron’s mind. Worth the effort it would have taken to stay present. Valarr missed the closeness they had once shared, he knew that for certain. And he could not help but think that he desired it again, at least a small bit. He’d only been unwilling or unable to admit it until Daeron had let him fall apart without reproach. 

Ahead of Valarr, Kiera had lowered herself to the ground and slipped off her shoes, drawing up her skirts as she dipped her feet into the water. Following with his heart in his throat, Valarr settled himself behind her, letting her rest back against his front. 

“Rhae’s making me a flower chain,” she said, smiling. Her perfume reached him, sweet and floral, and he ducked his face against her neck, pressing a kiss there. 

He hummed, remembering how unsteady he’d felt watching her grin at Daeron, the envy churning in his stomach again. It was disquieting, combined with the realization that he missed Daeron more than he was willing to admit. 

Valarr kissed her neck again, just below where a necklace he’d given her rested against her skin. Jealousy was unbecoming, he knew. Made him petty and ridiculous. But how was he meant to feel anything else when she’d looked at Daeron with such happy eyes?

Daeron, whose touch Valarr could still feel a day later. 

“I was happy to hear you laugh,” Kiera continued, letting her head fall back against his shoulder as Valarr slid his hand up her throat and tilted her mouth toward his. “You’re far handsomer when you smile.”

He hummed again against her mouth, thinking again that he wished he was better at teasing and jesting. One of his hands banded across Kiera’s front, and as he heard footsteps at their side, he kissed her again. Rhae made a sound of disgust and rushed away from them, but from the corner of his eye, he could see Daeron standing near them, acting like he wasn’t watching Valarr back. 

Valarr couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge Daeron. Not after he’d wept silently in front of him yesterday. Not when he wasn’t certain that he hated how Daeron was watching him press kisses against Kiera’s neck. 

His back went stiff at that thought, and he straightened, clearing his throat. Heat, or something like it, pooled somewhere in his stomach, and he tried hard to ignore the sensation. He kissed Kiera’s cheek again, the weight of Daeron’s gaze on them heavy enough that Valarr could feel it. 

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Gods, Daeron liked himself better when he was drunk. 

His head was pounding as he laid flat on the grass in the gardens, trying desperately to let the cool evening air soothe him. But for all that his skull felt like there was a hammer pounding against it, his thoughts were far too clear. He’d so badly wanted to drink during dinner, but he’d held himself back, ignoring the way his body screamed for it. 

He could only hear Kiera’s voice telling him that she liked him more when he was sober. And as they’d leave for King’s Landing in the morning, and he had plans to hole away in a pub and avoid their family, he thought that he would give her one more night where he wasn’t drowning in drink. 

Which made him a fucking idiot, he knew. And made guilt burn in his stomach, crawling sick and acrid up his throat. It was all made worse by the fact that he’d dreamed the night before of a dragon laying over the top of him, pinning him to his front so completely that he could hardly move. But it had not been like when he had seen his uncle’s death in Ser Duncan’s arms, dreadful and foreboding and dark. He only knew that he had been unbearably hot, and that—strangely—the smell of orange blossoms had been choking him.  

Daeron knew what he might like for the dream to mean, when the smell of flowers had been taunting him for days. That and the feel of Valarr’s shoulder beneath his hand. That and how soft Kiera’s skin had been against his fingertips. But that was no promise, he knew. For all that his dreams came true, his wishes rarely did.

Idiot.

Slowly, Daeron lifted his hand from the soft grass beneath him, pressing his fingers hard against the still healing gash in his cheek. The pain that spread across his face was sharp enough that he hissed through his teeth, dropping his hand again. Relief followed the pain, short lived and hardly there at all, but sweet all the same. Still, he thought the hurt was likely less than he deserved. 

He had done a great, great deal of foolish things in his life. He regretted very often that he was not the help to his father that he should be. That he swilled and found his way into whore’s beds more often than he did most else was a source of shame for him. 

But that he had allowed himself to grow so fond of Kiera may be the worst of it all. Another bit of idiocy that he was certain to find himself punished for, either at his own hand or someone else’s. He had watched Valarr rain kisses over her at the pond the day before, his hands pressed against her front. And he knew that Valarr was aware he had watched. 

What Valarr did not know, what Daeron wished he did not know, was that watching them both had made his skin burn and his fingers itch to move. To reach, though he’d never admit to that. The shame at the thought wrapped around him, making him wish desperately for some sort of release to absolve him of it. 

The dream of dragons and orange blossoms had only worsened his thoughts. Lecherous thoughts. Demented, foolish, lonely, broken thoughts. Because his mind was shattered and rotted, and the black had long since sunk into his bones and his blood and spread through him until it was all that he was. 

Footsteps near him drew Daeron from his musings, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his head. Not even when Valarr appeared above him, his eyes rimmed red as they’d been for this entire godsdamned visit to Summerhall. 

The rot crawled through Daeron at the sight of Valarr, and he was quite certain that it was going to creep into his mouth and throat until it suffocated him. 

Valarr’s mouth was flat and thin as he stared down at Daeron. “Cousin.”

Daeron could think of no reason that Valarr might have sought him out after two days of ignoring him following their conversation in the solar. He’d bared too much of his soul to Daeron, and that he didn’t use Daeron’s name only confirmed to him that Valarr regretted it. He ignored the way that made his stomach drop with something like disappointment.

More likely, Valarr had taken his own turn in the gardens and simply had the bad luck to stumble upon Daeron. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had come upon Daeron lying on the ground. It likely wouldn’t be the last.

I’m at least awake this time. 

“Valarr.”

Valarr’s eyes flashed with something that Daeron couldn’t name. Heat maybe. Or annoyance or pleasure or something else all together. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Daeron asked, dragging himself to his feet and ignoring the stiffness in his limbs. “Dreaming of wine.”

There was a tic in Valarr’s jaw that was far too enticing to Daeron. He wanted to see it again. Like the crack of a whip, Daeron remembered the sting that pressing his fingers against his cheek had given him. The split moment of silence that the sting had wrought in his mind. If he provoked Valarr enough, perhaps he would do something to hurt Daeron, and the relief would be far sweeter than anything he could grant himself. 

Valarr looked Daeron up and down, his blue eye shockingly bright in the lowering sun. “You’re dreaming of it more and more as of late, it seems,” he said, his throat tensing as he swallowed. “Why’s that?”

Daeron was certain that being honest with Valarr would make him pathetic. What was he to say, really? That he was so keen to please Valarr’s wife that he was willing to put his body through what felt akin to torture? That he knew it was for nothing, when Kiera was obviously besotted with Valarr? But he was also certain that he still wanted to provoke Valarr into hurting him, somehow. 

Gods, he was pathetic. Pathetic and aching for something he could not have. 

“Your wife,” Daeron said, letting a small smile tug at his mouth as he took the smallest step closer to Valarr. The smile at the thought of Kiera was genuine at least, even if he’d brought her up in an attempt to anger Valarr. He liked her more than he liked most other people he knew, pretty and kind and free as she was. 

Valarr’s jaw ticced again, going tight at the words. “You’re spending a great deal of time together lately.” At his sides, his hands were clenching over and over again, his rings winking in the light. 

Daeron let his smile widen and his voice drop slightly as his heart raced at the sight of Valarr’s annoyance. He would get a strike to his face, he thought. And perhaps the hurt would purge him of his guilt. Perhaps the hit would make Valarr feel slightly less terrible over the loss of his father. Perhaps it would clear Daeron’s mind the way alcohol so often did. Or perhaps it would do nothing for either of them, and they would both remain in an awkward limbo with one another. 

Daeron’s head tilted to the side, and he felt his loose hair brush over the back of his neck above his shirt. Strangely, he wished it might have been fingers on the skin there. Kiera’s, maybe. Or Valarr’s, still flexing restlessly at his side. 

“I’m rather fond of her, cousin,” Daeron said, wanting to finally see a crack in Valarr’s composure. “How lucky I am that she’s also fond of me.”

Valarr stepped closer to Daeron, close enough that he could smell a faint trace of sandalwood on his skin. Excitement, or dread possibly, sparked hot and heavy in Daeron’s stomach at the frustration on Valarr’s face. 

“You’re a fool,” Valarr said, but the words were not as cutting as he likely meant them to be, his voice low. Slightly cracked. 

“It must rankle, then,” Daeron murmured, anticipation skating over his skin, “that she’s so fond of me still. Useless as I am.”

Daeron braced himself, certain that the strike would come now, that it would be hard enough to clear his mind for a blessed moment. 

“Fool,” Valarr said again, and his voice broke on the word. “Fool.”

But before Daeron could speak, hands had grasped his face, calloused and hot and real, and a mouth slanted over his in a kiss hard enough it could nearly be called a punishment. He froze for a moment, shock making his mind go blank far better than pain would have been able to. 

Without thinking, he lifted his hands, grasping at Valarr’s tunic, drawing their fronts together. Valarr’s kiss was angry as he bit at Daeron’s bottom lip, but the closeness was so heady that Daeron only bit back, trying to make Valarr angrier still. Daeron ran his tongue along Valarr’s lip, grunting when Valarr’s fingers stole into his hair and tugged hard enough to sting. 

One of Valarr’s hands ran down Daeron’s back, pressing them even closer together. A familiar darkness stole over Daeron’s mind, the phantom smell of orange blossoms suddenly so thick that he swore he could taste it. That had to mean something, didn’t it? That he was not half mad and that his dreams were real and that the thoughts of Valarr and Kiera did not make him something wicked. 

He gasped against Valarr’s mouth, and the sound seemed to startle Valarr out of his trance, his hands dropping from Daeron so quickly that he might as well have been aflame. The sensation of being alone again made Daeron sway on his feet for a moment, suddenly bereft. They stared at one another, and Daeron’s eyes tracked down to Valarr’s mouth, swollen and red. 

Valarr’s chest rose and fell over and over again, his breathing more labored than Daeron thought he’d ever seen it. His mouth screwed up, and Daeron was certain that he would say something cutting. 

Instead, he grasped Daeron’s chin and pressed another hot, angry kiss against his mouth before dropping his hand and stepping away. 

“Fool,” he said again, turning and rushing from the gardens before Daeron could bring his tongue to form any words. He could not be certain that Valarr had meant his last admonishment for Daeron or himself. 

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Valarr could not breathe as he all but ran from Daeron in the gardens, his feet carrying him to his bedchamber without his mind’s consent. He had broken Kiera’s trust, surely. If not with the first kiss, as without thought as it had been, then surely with the second, when a rush of fear was already pulsing through him. 

Weak, was all that Valarr could think. Or all that he would let himself think, moving through the halls. Because he could still feel Daeron’s mouth beneath his, the heat of him against his front. He didn’t know what happened, standing in the gardens with him. 

Only that one moment, his fist had clenched at his side, listening to Daeron speak of Kiera. And that in the next, violence had not been what most called to him, so much as the desire to obliterate the very core of who he was. 

And he had. He must have, to kiss Daeron. To be disloyal and weak and a far bigger fool than he thought he could ever call Daeron. Because while he regretted it, he had not hated it. Not at all. 

“Fuck,” Valarr whispered, the curse snapping out of him the closer he got to the rooms. “Fuck!”

His hands were shaking when he pushed through the door, finding Kiera in a nightgown, a discarded bath by the fireplace. There was a sweet, floral smell permeating the warm air, but Valarr felt cold, as if any heat in his body had been sucked away when he’d touched Daeron. 

She turned to him, her smile falling at whatever she saw on his face. “Valarr?”

“I spoke with Daeron,” he forced himself to say, walking towards where she stood by the bed. You did more than speak, a voice in his head hissed. 

She caught his arm when he got close to her, tilting her head back to look at him. “The day we danced?”

“Yes.” He shook his head, pushing her until she was sitting on the bed and lowering himself to his knees in front of her. “No. No. After dinner. Just now. In the gardens.”

Kiera cupped his jaw in her hand, her brows still furrowed. Her thumb brushed over his cheek. He very likely looked pathetic prostrated before her like a supplicant, which was no less than he deserved. Years of molding himself in his father’s perfect image had fallen to pieces in a single moment. 

A single, idiotic moment. Valarr hadn’t ever made a mistake so glaring. And the knowledge was made worse by the traitorous voice in his mind that whispered that he might like to do so again. The voice was in the back of his mind, impossible to ignore as it made him imagine Kiera and Daeron both. 

A small, confused smile graced Kiera’s mouth, and Valarr could see the concern in her pretty brown eyes. “That’s no reason to look so distraught, love.”

Valarr buried his face against her stomach, the soft linen of her nightgown dragging against his burning cheeks. 

“Did he say something strange again?” Kiera asked, her hands slipping into his hair. “You’re worrying me, Valarr.”

Valarr’s stomach churned, threatening to make him cast up his accounts. She would leave him, when he told her what she did. Kiera was lonely, yes, but she was not spineless. There was every chance that apologies would mean nothing to her. 

And he would let her go, if she wanted. He would let her go back to Tyrosh if she wished; fight Grandfather and whoever else thought to stop him. Being apart from her would kill him, sap any strength he had from his body the further away she went. But he would let her go. 

He pressed himself even closer to her, his arms gripping at her sides as he tried to commit the floral smell of her soaps and soils to mind. This may well be the last time she let him so close to her. 

She laughed nervously, sifting her fingers through his hair again. “Valarr, what’s happened?” 

Gods, he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t. But he must. His hands tightened in the sides of her nightgown, so hard that he feared he may pop stitches. “I kissed him, Kiera.”

Her hands stopped moving in his hair, her spine going stiff and straight. Still, Valarr didn’t dare look up at her, his eyes welling again with tears. He was sick with guilt and fear, and he braced himself for the moment that she struck him with her words or pushed him away. 

“In the solar?” she asked, her voice cracking a small bit. 

“Just now,” Valarr said, finally pulling back to look up at her. Her brows were furrowed, her eyes blown wide with disbelief. Suddenly, he couldn’t speak fast enough, his words coming out in a nonsensical, panicked rush. “He was speaking of you,” Valarr choked out. “Of his fondness for you and yours for him and he was... goading me. I know that he was, but I could not fucking think, Kiera, and I am so sorry. I should not have and I am so, so sorry.”

Kiera’s mouth fell open and snapped shut. Over and over again, like she could not think of what to say. 

“It was a mistake, Kiera,” Valarr said. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from speaking her name. “I don’t–,” his voice cracked, his cheeks burning so hot he thought he would singe Kiera’s nightgown. “I don’t know why.”

“But it was not days ago?” Kiera finally asked. Her hands had slipped to his shoulders, and they gripped him so tightly that he felt her nails dig into his skin through his tunic. 

He forced his fingers to loosen, his joints feeling stiff as he let go of her and straightened. “No. Just now.” This was where his life fell apart, he feared. He would look into her eyes and would not beg forgiveness. “I cannot say how sorry I am, Kiera. It was...”

Nothing, he meant to say. But the word turned to ash in his mouth. The week here had not been nothing. Daeron’s hand steady and supportive on Valarr’s shoulder while he wept had not been nothing. The three of them somehow drawing smiles from each other in the midst of their family’s grief had not been nothing.

Kiera sighed, as though she was steeling herself. “He goaded you, you said?”

Valarr swallowed, something like a sob escaping him when she cupped his face again. His eyes burned, his mouth burned, his heart burned, and he did not know how to make it all stop. “It’s not an excuse.”

“I did not ask you for one, husband.” 

Her hands were so gentle that Valarr could not help his tears from slipping down his cheeks. “I am sorry,” he rasped again. “More than I can say.”

Kiera bit down on her lip, brushing hair back off of his forehead. “I am not angry, Valarr.”

His head fell forward again, relief making his body go lax. He did not want to cry, but he could do nothing else as he rested his face against her thighs, his tears wetting the fabric. 

“Seek to be honest with me,” Kiera said, her voice little more than a whisper. Valarr couldn’t make out what was coloring her voice. Guilt of her own, maybe, though he knew not for what. Grief or betrayal. All of them or none. 

“Of course,” Valarr vowed. 

“Have you done such a thing before?”

“Never, Kiera. I’ve never even thought of it.” Mistresses and affairs were commonplace enough for princes and kings. But Kiera was beloved to him. Precious and trusted and adored, always. There had been women at court who had smiled at him too long, who had touched his arm and leaned too close. Never once had he ever thought to look their way, when he cared as much for Kiera as he did.

Her hand brushed shakily over the back of his head. “Do you wish to do so again?” she asked quietly. “With him?”

Valarr wanted to say no, more even than he wanted Kiera’s forgiveness, because he could not reconcile such foolishness with himself. But he had promised Kiera that he would not lie to her. And even if it took her from him, he would not break another vow to her. 

He hesitated too long, his mouth working silently, and Kiera sighed again. After a moment, she twisted her fingers into his hair, drawing his head back. The sting on his scalp drew another half-sob from him, and Kiera’s eyes softened as she stared at him, holding him in place at her feet. 

“Call him here.”

𖤓𖤓𖤓

Kiera was not... pleased, necessarily, that Valarr had kissed another. But as shock flitted over his tear streaked face, she could not find it in herself to be angry. And certainly not when days later, she could still feel the shape of Daeron’s fingers brushing against the side of her neck, soft and quick. Certainly not when the memory caused heat to settle somewhere low in her navel each time she thought of it. 

Had Valarr kissed one of the girls at court, had he kissed Daeron days before and hidden it, had he done more than simply kiss Daeron in a moment of panic, Kiera would have been angry. She would have refused to let him touch her ever again. She would have cursed his name and his family and the entire fucking continent as she fled back to Tyrosh nursing a broken heart. 

But he was so clearly sick at the reality that he was able to break, and Kiera only wished that she had been there to see it, as she’d been hoping for something to shatter his walls for days. 

“What?” Valarr asked, blinking up at her. 

“Call him here,” Kiera said again quietly. “Then come back to me, husband.”

She didn’t give herself time to second guess her command. What she would do once Daeron came—if he came at all—she wasn’t yet sure. But there were ideas coming to her as she watched Valarr rise and speak to the guard outside the door that made her stomach dip and her chest flush. 

Sweet, sad boys, she thought, strangely drawn to the prospect that they might be her sweet, sad boys. 

Valarr lowered himself in front of her again, laying his head in her lap. “What do you mean to do?”

Kiera didn’t have an answer. “Did you like it?” she asked. “Kissing him, I mean.”

His breath shuddered out of him, and Valarr buried his face against her thighs. That was answer enough, she thought. 

“I’m not angry,” Kiera said. “Because you did not lie to me. And because I trust you.” Valarr relaxed slightly at her words, though his hands were gripping her hips so tightly she thought he may bruise her without meaning to. She let out a heavy breath, her own honesty feeling daunting. “And because I might have kissed him myself, if he had done the same to me.”

Valarr lifted his head to look up at her, his mouth still drawn into a thin, flat line, his eyes still shining with tears. But something in his gaze went slightly darker. 

“You’re still angry at yourself, aren’t you, husband?” She caught one of his tears on her thumb. “For acting out of sorts?”

“Of course I am, Kiera,” Valarr said. “It was foolish. Beyond foolish, and I—.”

“You are as human as the rest of us,” she cut him off. “No matter how you would pretend otherwise.”

“I have to be—.”

Again, she spoke over him. “Nothing, Valarr! Enough of this! You are honorable, and you are wise, and you will someday make a strong king. But you are young yet. You cannot act as though a single mistake will ruin everything.” 

His jaw ticced, his dark brows furrowing. “How am I meant to do anything else?”

“You’ll learn,” Kiera said, her bottom lip trembling. “Perhaps Daeron will help.”

Valarr’s eyes flashed again, and she smiled, worried she may be close to tears. Daeron had goaded him, he’d said. Kiera would do the same, she decided, intent on making him realize that his staidness was only hurting him.  

“I don’t wish to speak of Daeron.”

“You wish to absolve yourself?” she murmured, leaning down to kiss him when he nodded. For a moment, she imagined that she was kissing what was left of Daeron on his mouth away, taking it for herself. She drew her nightgown up her thighs, slipping her fingers back into his hair. “Then you’ll speak of him.”

Valarr kissed the inside of her thigh. “Demanding.”

“You’ll do best to speak kindly of me,” Kiera said, leaning back against the bed. “As I’ve forgiven you so easily.”

Another kiss, then one to her other thigh. “Yes, wife,” he murmured against her skin. 

She drew his mouth to the apex of her thighs, sighing when he licked over her clit. His hands gripped her thighs, pressing them wider, his fingers digging into her flesh. Kiera closed her eyes, a tightness in her chest loosening at Valarr’s closeness and the dull pleasure that rolled through her

“Tell me, Valarr,” she sighed, using her grip in his hair to move him. “Did you enjoy your kiss?”

Without speaking, he turned his head and bit her thigh, hard enough that she gasped. As quickly as he’d done it, he turned back, his lips wrapping gently around her clit. There was a dull ache in her thigh now, and she could feel where his teeth had pressed into her skin, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to sting. Another little sign that Valarr was finally falling apart at the seams, because he had never before done such a thing. 

Her hips moved of her own accord under his attentions, thrusting up to meet his mouth. “A yes, then?” 

He didn’t answer beyond licking her again, making a little moan get stuck in her throat. His hands were still wrapped around her legs, holding her in place, and when she looked down her body at him, she found that he was staring up at her from between her thighs, his two colored eyes bright with emotion. What emotions, exactly, however, she couldn’t be certain, because he would not deign to speak. 

“He touched my neck,” she said, another moan breaking the words. “That day you were ignoring me in the training yard.”

Finally, Valarr lifted his head enough to speak, sliding two fingers inside of her. “I was not ignoring you.”

Kiera hummed, not agreeing. “I’m sure.”

Valarr shook his head, lowering his mouth again. “I wasn’t.”

“No matter,” she started, her skin flushing at the pleasure of his fingers moving inside of her. “Daeron touched me. Just for a moment.”

Valarr’s fingers faltered, his eyes flicking up to her face again. He pulled back, speaking against her thigh. “And did you enjoy it?”

Kiera nodded, feeling her pleasure stretch tight and thin when his mouth pressed back to her clit, laving attention where she was swollen and sensitive. “I did, strangely enough. But a better question is what shall you do if Daeron arrives here?” 

Sweet, sad boys, she thought again, imagining how gently Daeron’s fingers had tugged her hair from the links of her necklace. Her release rushed over her unexpectedly, then, pleasure breaking beneath Valarr’s mouth and thoughts of what may yet be. Her fingers scrambled for purchase in Valarr’s hair, pulling tightly enough that he grunted against her. 

Without speaking, Valarr climbed over her, burying his face in her neck. He kissed the skin above her neckline, his breathing heavy. “What do you mean,” he demanded, “by inviting Daeron here?”

He wasn’t angry, Kiera didn’t think, so much as he was worried. But she could hear the hope in his voice, and she thought that perhaps he was craving someone to break him as much as she had been hoping for the same. She ran her hands over his back, relief rushing over her, that they had not ruined themselves somehow with what had happened between the gardens and now. 

Perhaps Daeron would come, and the three of them would do something foolish that was still somehow a boon to them all. Valarr might realize that a mistake was not life ending, and she might feel less alone under the weight of two fond gazes, and Daeron might not think that he was mad or broken or whatever else haunted him. 

She shrugged, slipping her hands beneath Valarr’s tunic and feeling the muscles of his back against her palms. His skin was hot, his spine held tense. “I love you,” she said instead, thinking she likely wasn’t capable of answering his question in a way that made sense.  

Valarr murmured the words back against her throat, repeating them over and over again between kisses to her jaw and shoulder. Tears prickled at her eyes, strangely. Not because he’d told her he loved her. He did it so often, and showed her so often, that she’d never doubted the truth of the words. 

But she was suddenly aware of just how much time had passed since she had made Valarr call for Daeron. And as happy as she was, as relieved that she could tell that Valarr was, his body slowly relaxing under her wandering hands, she was glaringly aware that Daeron had not come.

𖤓𖤓𖤓

He’s going to fucking kill me. 

This wasn’t the first time that Daeron had thought something similar. He’d thought it before in pubs, when others had taken issue with his ramblings. He’d thought it during Ser Duncan’s trial. He’d thought it about Father, on several occasions, when Daeron had made a particularly egregious lapse of judgement. 

And he thought it now, standing outside of Kiera and Valarr’s bedchamber, because he was rather certain that Valarr had summoned him with the intent to murder him and hide his body in a wall somewhere. The only reason that he had not drunk himself into a stupor after the gardens was because he had no desire to make Father angry again if he was gone in the morning when the rest of the family had prepared to leave for King’s Landing. 

But now, him laying in his bed, his body craving wine, his mind unable to stop remembering Valarr’s mouth on his, would have been for nothing, because he would be gone in the morning regardless. I should have gotten drunk, Daeron thought a little pathetically, finally knocking on the door. Then he would at least be unaware as Valarr ran him through with a sword, or whatever it was he meant to do once Daeron stepped inside. 

The guard that had summoned him hadn’t accompanied him here, seemingly dismissed for the evening. Which only made Daeron more certain that he was about to be freed from this mortal coil. Kiera’s voice called through the door, bidding him open it, and Daeron considered running away. 

He could just ignore them both on the journey to King’s Landing and in his time there. Valarr would be perfectly happy to forget what they’d done in the gardens, even if Daeron did not think he would be able to. It would remain a secret between the two of them, dark and shameful and ever present, but Daeron thought that only he would be haunted by it. 

Every part of his mind screamed at him to just walk away from the door and whatever ambush was waiting for him inside. He was certain to lose Kiera’s friendship and whatever fledgling peace he and Valarr had begun to carve out between them. Still, he let his stiff fingers wrap around the door’s handle, the iron frigid to the touch as he pushed the door open. 

Daeron had never been the bravest of his siblings, that title going to Egg and Rhae and Aerion. Nor had he been the smartest, Aemon and Daella filling the role instead. Which was perhaps why he opened the door at all and stepped inside, even with fear making him feel sick to his stomach. Idiocy, instead of bravery drove him. Idiocy and the bone deep certainty that he deserved the pain. 

He stood straight backed and miserable as the door shut behind him. Kiera was lying back on their bed in a thin white nightgown that Daeron struggled to tear his eyes from. Valarr stood beside her, his hair and shirt unruly and ruffled. 

Daeron’s stomach sank further as he took in the scene, knowing what he’d interrupted, even with the distance between the two of them. What was the point of calling him here if they’d thought to find themselves in bed? He could not fault them for it, he supposed, when he was drawn to them both. But envy, or something like it, twisted together inside of him with grief and loneliness and hate for himself, all serving to make him feel like the biggest idiot that had ever lived.

Kiera pushed up slightly, and Daeron noticed that her nightgown was ruched up around her thighs, showing off swathes of dark, pretty skin that he had no right to see. Again, he cast his eyes up at the ceiling, aware that all the while, Valarr refused to look his way. 

“Daeron,” Kiera said, and he could not tell what the tightness in her voice meant. 

“My lady,” he forced himself to greet her, sure that he no longer got to use her name. His voice cracked slightly. “Cousin.”

Daeron braced himself, expecting a rebuke to come from one or both of them sooner rather than later. He trailed his eyes over the room rather than look at either of them, deciding that the brass bathtub sitting abandoned near the fireplace was likely the safest place for him to look. He became aware of the faint smell of orange blossoms emanating off of the cooling water, and a wry laugh died before it made its way off of his lips as he was reminded again of his dream. 

A dragon over him, indeed. He’d seen his own death this time, rather than that of his loved ones. The way he had imagined Valarr after having the dream made sense now. His throat tightened again. An idiotic way to go, all things considered. 

Kiera tilted her head at him, her mass of pink hair bouncing with the movement. “Something you’d like to confess?”

Daeron cut a look at Valarr, but he hadn’t stopped standing still as a statue at his wife’s side, hands clenched and cheeks red. It would be easy to blame Valarr, Daeron thought. But he dismissed that nearly as soon as it came to him. 

He had not been the one to start the kiss, that was true. Still, he was ashamed of what he’d done. He’d returned the kiss, and would accept another, he knew. He’d gone to his rooms with an aching heart and a pounding head and had done nothing but think of how heady the attention had been. 

“Don’t look at Valarr,” Kiera said. “I’ve heard already what he’s done.”

Daeron cleared his throat. He knew what he had walked into, with their disheveled hair and bright eyes. They’d moved past the kiss already, because it had been nothing to Valarr, just as it should be nothing to Daeron.

“I can’t imagine you have any need of me then, my lady,” he forced himself to say. 

“Come closer,” she said, leaning back on her hands. “Meet my eyes when you make your confession, Daeron.”

And while it was again fucking idiotic, Daeron did as she bid, feeling helpless to do anything else. He stopped mere steps away from her and Valarr, trying hard not to look at either of them. “What would you have me say?”

She shifted slightly, her legs parting, and Daeron’s breath caught in his throat. “The truth. Valarr gave me that, didn’t you?”

Valarr grunted, his eyes flicking briefly to Daeron’s, his cheeks burning brighter as he tore them away.

“Your turn, then,” Kiera said, a sharp smile on her face. “You kissed him?”

“You seem to know the answer,” Daeron said. 

Kiera stood, her nightgown falling down around her ankles. “And yet I’d hear it from your lips.”

Daeron swallowed. “I did.”

At his side, Valarr made a panicked sound, like he hadn’t expected Daeron to tell the truth. His hands were flexing at his sides, and Daeron noticed for the first time that he was wearing one of Baelor’s rings. 

Kiera took another step closer to him, until their toes nearly brushed. She looked up at him, and Daeron trailed his eyes over her face, committing the details to memory. He’d enjoyed their camaraderie in the past days. A shame he’d likely lose it after whatever else he confessed here tonight. 

She nodded, and her rows of earring caught the light. She had a gem in her left lobe the same shade as Valarr’s eye, and something inside of Daeron shattered at the sight of it. 

“One more thing, then,” Kiera sighed, looking at Valarr for a moment. They seemed to speak silently for a moment, making the desire to flee rise yet again. She turned back to Daeron. “Would you do so again?”

“I–.”

Kiera lifted a hand, cutting him off. “The truth, I said.”

Daeron pressed his lips together, because he had been prepared to lie. This time, when he turned to look at Valarr, he found that Valarr was staring back, and when their eyes met, he felt his own cheeks go red and hot. The flush was uncomfortable, creeping down over his throat. Shamefaced, Daeron nodded as he held Valarr’s gaze. He looked back at Kiera. “Yes.”

A breath rushed out of Valarr, and Daeron thought that it almost sounded relieved. Kiera nodded, her brown eyes soft and pretty in the light of the fire. “Good.”

Before he could think to ask what she meant, Kiera had pushed up to her toes and grabbed his shoulders, pulling his mouth down to hers. Unlike when Valarr had kissed him in the garden, there was no moment of hesitation now, his arm banding behind her back and hauling her up against his front, relief so sweet that he thought he may go lightheaded. 

Kiera’s lips were softer than Valarr’s, sweet and plush when she let out a little laugh against his mouth, her arms twining behind his neck. Without letting himself think, Daeron reached to the side and caught Valarr by the sleeve, tugging him forward. When Valarr’s hand landed against his jaw and turned him his way, the last of Daeron’s tension leeched from him. 

Daeron wondered if this was not a dream, when Valarr pressed their mouths together. It was different than what he saw, far clearer, far more realistic, far more pleasant. But he thought that a dream may make more sense than being granted forgiveness and kisses from them both. 

Valarr gripped Daeron’s shoulder, his mouth sliding along Daeron’s jaw. “I don’t regret it,” he whispered, low enough that Daeron hardly heard him. 

Daeron, still not certain what liberties he was to be allowed here, banded his hand around Valarr’s wrist, his other hand still pressing Kiera against him. His voice was barely a whisper, soft with grief, heavy with relief. 

“I’ve missed you,” he said, the words making Valarr’s breath rattle out of him as he nodded against Daeron’s shoulder. 

Kiera’s hands landed soft on either side of Daeron’s face, her fingers brushing softly against the cut on his cheek. Her touch was so unlike what Daeron had done to himself in the garden that he thought he may weep at how gentle it was. “Stay tonight? With us both?”

When he nodded, she caught him by his shirt and tugged him back until both of them fell against the bed. Daeron laughed a little breathlessly as he caught himself above her. One night would likely not sate him, but he’d pretend that it would as he glutted himself upon the sight of her and Valarr both. 

Valarr pushed on Daeron’s shoulder until he rolled off of Kiera. They stared at each other, Daeron’s heart pounding inside of his chest. Valarr’s jaw ticced, his throat tensing as he swallowed, and Daeron had the sudden, terrifying thought that Valarr would command him to leave. But he only leaned down and kissed Daeron again, quick and closed-mouthed. 

“Help him with his tunic, Kiera,” Valarr said, kissing her when she sat up with a grin. 

The way they touched one another was familiar. So fond and sweet that it made Daeron almost unbearably jealous, wishing that he may be part of it somehow. He did not know what would come after this, if anything. But he knew that there was a part of him, large and loud and lonely, that desperately wanted there to be. 

She shifted, swinging her leg over Daeron until she sat astride him. Brushing his hair back off of his forehead, she trailed a finger down over his nose, tracing his features. “You’re handsome when you’re clean shaven, Daeron.”

His mouth quirked, and he couldn’t stop himself from catching her hand and kissing her knuckles. “Am I not otherwise?”

From over her shoulder, Daeron heard Valarr shift. “She tells me I’m only handsome when I smile.”

Kiera laughed, slipping her hands down to Daeron’s chest and fiddling with the ties on his tunic. He toed off his boots as she finished with the ties, smiling up at her all the while. She gestured at him to sit up, sliding his tunic off of his shoulders and pulling his undershirt up over his head. “The both of you should listen to me.”

As listening to her was how Daeron had found himself half undressed under her, he was inclined to agree. 

“Lift your arms,” Valarr said, appearing behind Kiera. Her hair was haloing her in the firelight, the ends of her curls catching the light and seeming to glow around her face.

She did as he asked, letting him lift her nightgown over her head and baring her to the room. Daeron let himself run his hands up her hips until they slid into the curve of her waist, the feel of her soft, warm skin going to his head. The smell of orange blossoms clung to her skin, making Daeron’s thoughts feel hazy as she rocked against him slightly, pressing herself to where he was growing hard in his trousers. 

When he drifted his fingers to her navel, he became aware of the bars of gold in her nipples. His mouth went dry as he looked up at her, alarmingly lovely with her necklaces and loose hair and soft smile, the long lines of her body bared to him. 

He pushed up and caught a nipple between his lips, using his hand on her waist to help her rock her hips again. His cock was hard and aching, each drag of her hips over him making his stomach bottom out. And when he caught a glimpse of Valarr behind her, his skin burned hotter, his grip on Kiera’s hips tightening. 

He’d shed his own shirt at some point, and he kneeled on the bed beside them, kissing the underside of Kiera’s jaw. She let out a happy little sigh when Daeron rocked their hips together again, and he was so enamored by the sound that he endeavored to do whatever he could to have her make it again. 

Valarr brushed Kiera’s hair back, his fingers pinching at her other nipple. “Can you come like this, do you think?”

Her head fell back, her eyes pinching shut when she nodded. Daeron let his teeth drag over her nipple, touching his tongue to her piercing, the little gem hard and warm against his tongue. Her skin was so sweetly perfumed that Daeron could hardly think, his mind nearly blank with pleasure.

Valarr’s hand slipped into the hair at the nape of Daeron’s neck, tugging slightly. “Harder,” he murmured to Daeron. “Just a little. Be careful with her.”

Valarr spoke of Kiera like she was porcelain, prized and pretty and perfect. And Daeron wouldn’t disagree. Her fingernails dug into his shoulder, sharp little pinpricks against his skin. 

“He has been,” Kiera said, a little whimper following the words when she ground harder against Daeron’s lap. “He is.”

Valarr’s fingers were cradling his head, and Daeron felt moments away from preening at the gentle touch, so at odds with their earlier kiss. He met Daeron’s eye, his mouth working as he nodded. “He’s a soft heart.”

Daeron thought he might be, at the way the compliment, so earnestly spoken, made his chest go tight with affection. Had someone else spoken it, he thought he might have felt embarrassed or ashamed. But he and Valarr were perhaps finding their way back to one another, and Valarr had seen him far better than many others for a long while. 

Hope was as heady as the weight of Kiera atop him, and he lifted his other hand to cup her breast, sucking gently on her nipple. She shuddered, grinding harder against him, a quiet moan following. 

“A kiss, Valarr,” she gasped, her voice reedy. 

When Valarr leaned down to press their mouths together, he kept his hand in Daeron’s hair, sifting gently through the strands. In Daeron’s lap, Kiera’s back went stiff, her whimper getting caught against Valarr’s mouth as she pushed her hips more firmly against Daeron. 

Daeron lifted his mouth, distracted briefly by the way her nipple was stiff and shining from his mouth, the brown a shade darker than her skin. He caught her chin and kissed her again, helping her shift until she was reclined against the headboard, her eyes slightly dazed. 

“A shame you two refused to speak sooner.”

Daeron, who still wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t dreaming, laughed, looking over his shoulder at Valarr. They wouldn’t have without Kiera, and he thought it likely that Valarr knew that as well as he had. 

“Kiera,” Valarr sighed, his voice amused.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” Kiera said, gesturing at Daeron to join her again. “I’ll ignore you.” She kissed Daeron, nipping at his bottom lip. “Make you watch.”

“You’ll give him a fright,” Daeron muttered, loud enough for Valarr to hear. 

Valarr scoffed behind them, but made no move to join them. “Will you?”

Her legs wrapped around Daeron’s hips, drawing him against her cunt again. “If you speak unkindly.”

Daeron laughed again, kissing a line down Kiera’s throat, pausing to bite gently at the crook of her neck. “He wasn’t unkind.”

She hummed, gasping when he bit her harder. “I think he likes watching, Daeron. Just look at him.”

He paused to look at where Valarr was sitting at the foot of the bed watching them, an obvious tent in his trousers, his chest rising and falling just a bit too quickly. And now that things were slightly more settled, though no less uncertain, Daeron wished to make Valarr snap again.

He slipped a hand between his and Kiera’s bodies, his fingers delving between her thighs until they found her cunt, slick and hot beneath him. Her clit was swollen, obviously tender when he pressed his fingertips to it and her head fell to the side. Daeron shifted so that Valarr could better see what he was doing, sliding two fingers into Kiera. 

She spread her legs further, and behind him, Daeron heard Valarr’s groan, low and sharp. The sound made heat race up Daeron’s back, and his hips pressed against the bed of their own accord. Her hands scrambled to find the ties of his trousers, and with his free hand, he helped her push them down until he could kick them off. 

“Did he fuck you before I came here?” Daeron asked, his mouth trailing over Kiera’s jaw. Valarr hissed at the harsh language, cutting out a warning to treat her as a lady in Valyrian.

But a sweet little gasp fell from Kiera’s lips when he asked and moved his fingers inside of her again. “Guess.”

Valarr’s hand landed heavy and hot against the nape of Daeron’s neck suddenly, his fingers digging slightly. “I haven’t yet. And you won’t either.”

Daeron scoffed, his cock straining against his thigh. He was perfectly content to grant Kiera her release over and over again, but it would be a lie to say he didn’t wish to feel the clasp of her body around him. 

Valarr used his grip on Daeron’s nape to push him down. “Can’t have you getting her with child.”

Daeron and Kiera both went slightly stiff at the words, though he suspected for different reasons. After what felt like a long moment, Daeron nodded, letting Valarr push his head down and direct him between Kiera’s thighs. He licked over her cunt without warning, enjoying her surprised whine far too much. 

Her hands found his hair, brushing it back off of his forehead and holding it away from his face. Valarr’s hand stroked down his back, the touch sending Daeron’s blood singing. He did it again, his fingers brushing against the small of his back and his spine and his sides, until Daeron was aching to be touched elsewhere. 

He ground his hips against the bed again as he sucked gently on Kiera’s clit, desperate for pressure against his cock. Her cunt was earthy and sweet and slightly salty on his tongue, and he thought that he could stay between her thighs forever if Valarr’s touches weren’t driving him to distraction. His hand stole back into Daeron’s hair, pushing him more firmly against Kiera. 

She moaned out softly, a mix of his name and Valarr’s both, her head lolled lazily against the headboard. Suddenly, Valarr’s touch left him, and a coldness at Daeron’s side told him that Valarr had stood. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull away from Kiera to find out more. 

Instead, he slipped his fingers back into Kiera, curling them inside of her. Her grip in his hair tightened, her pupils blown wide as she looked down at him, her lip caught between her teeth. Gods, she was pretty. Pretty and sweet, far better than Daeron deserved to touch. 

Valarr reappeared at his side, briefly lifting Daeron’s head to grant him a bruising kiss. He bit down on Daeron’s bottom lip, hard enough that Daeron thought he might bleed. His tongue ran over the stinging skin when he let go, but the movement couldn’t be called gentle as he tasted his wife on Daeron’s mouth. 

“Keep her content,” Valarr commanded. “Be soft.”

“Or don’t,” Kiera said, the words coming out on a whine. “Either is fine.”

Daeron laughed again, kissing her thigh before turning back to her cunt. He’d be soft as she deserved, tender and slow so that he might commit it all to her memory. 

“Soft,” Valarr said again. He settled himself behind Daeron, and the fact that Daeron couldn’t see what was happening was slightly disquieting. He felt Valarr kneel on either side of his legs, their bare skin pressing together. The sound of a bottle opening reached Daeron’s ears, but he was so focused on the way Kiera’s back was arching under his attentions that the sound hardly registered. 

In the next moment, he felt Valarr’s fingers, slick with oil, begin to touch him, shocking but not unpleasant as it caused him to groan against Kiera. More oil, a hand on his thigh, one finger working its way into him, tearing a broken moan out of Daeron. The stretch made arousal burn through him, and as Valarr pushed another finger into him, Daeron couldn’t help but grind against the bed again. 

He could hardly focus on drawing another release from Kiera as Valarr worked to wring more moans out of him. Her hands in his hair were the only thing that kept his mind from drifting away from him as she tugged and pulled him where she wanted, staring down at them with bright, delighted eyes. 

Valarr’s fingers pulled out of him, but Daeron felt more oil being poured, dripping down his skin. Fingers were replaced with Valarr’s cock, and Daeron forced himself still as Valarr pushed slowly into him, making soft shushing sounds when Daeron’s breath stalled. 

“Lovely boys,” Kiera said softly, her fingers brushing softly against Daeron’s injured cheek and ear. “Sweet boys.”

Valarr’s hips snapped forward, pushing the rest of the way into Daeron with a moan. He fell forward over Daeron as his hips started to move slowly. His mouth moved against Daeron’s shoulder. “Thank her,” he rasped. “For her compliment.”

Daeron forced himself to focus, licking again over her clit, paying attention to what movements made her shiver and arch and twist her hips against his mouth. She liked little licks to either side, Daeron’s fingers curled inside of her as he thrust into her cunt, when he pulled back and nipped gently at her thighs, kissing her pretty brown skin in apology right after.

And Daeron liked the sight of her above him and the stretch of Valarr inside of him, each thrust driving his own cock against the mattress. Valarr pulled Daeron away from Kiera, pressing their mouths together. Daeron kept his fingers moving inside of her, using his thumb to draw little circles against her clit. 

He could hardly kiss Valarr between his moans and his determination to wring another release from Kiera. He was moments away from his mind fully slipping from him, he feared, pleasure and contentment making his body wind tight. Around his fingers, he could feel Kiera’s cunt tightened, and he pressed his thumb down harder, his arousal rising when she cried out softly above him, the sound of her release the prettiest thing he’d ever heard. 

Her hands went limp in his hair, and Daeron reached up with one hand until he could card their fingers together, his other blindly grasping at the sheets as Valarr’s thrusts came harder. He groaned against Valarr’s mouth, their teeth clashing together as their kisses grew sloppier. 

He couldn’t think. Could hardly breathe, his stomach tightening with the tell tell signs of release. His cock ached as he pressed it harder against the bed, Valarr shifting the angle of his hips until Daeron cried out, his head falling forward. He cursed against Kiera’s thigh, the smell of the oils she’d bathed with overwhelming. 

Orange blossoms, he thought again, remembering his dream. Every inch of his skin burned, and everywhere that Valarr or Kiera touched him, he was certain that the shape of their hands would be branded onto him. 

The thought made his breath freeze in his lungs, his pleasure breaking. He choked out something, though he had no idea what he said as he spilled against the bed. Kiera’s name, maybe. Valarr’s or both. Perhaps he had thanked them, even, for not casting him aside. 

His fingers tightened around Kiera’s as his breathing slowed and Valarr’s hips finally stilled, a rush of warmth filling him. None of them spoke, and at first, Daeron was thankful for it. The smell of citrus and sandalwood assailed him, so heady that he thought he could happily lie between Kiera’s legs with Valarr’s weight against his back until morning. 

Kiera’s hand stroked through Valarr’s hair and then Daeron’s when Valarr shifted, slowly pulling himself from Daeron’s body. Valarr didn’t lift himself from Daeron, just stayed laid across his back, pressing him firmly into the bed. 

But as the reality of what he’d done sank in, Daeron tensed slightly, certain that he would be cast out now that the fervor had passed. 

Valarr shook his head against Daeron’s shoulder. “Just rest, Daeron. Stay.” 

Hard talks would come in the morning, Daeron was sure. Or perhaps in only a few minutes, when the three of them regained enough strength to stand and right themselves again. But with Kiera’s hands stroking softly through his hair and Valarr’s warmth at his back, Daeron could not bring himself to care, his thoughts blessedly, perfectly quiet. 

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