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PART SEVEN
Dreaming
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(Warning: minor implication of sexual assault and general squickiness early in the first scene.)
... ... ...
On the first of what was to be ten days' worth of formal dinners in honor of his eldest son and heir, the king was not present.
And no one said a word.
Such an absence was a common occurrence normally. The royal family had come to silent agreement to treat it no differently than they otherwise would have any other absence as though the circumstances were of no consequence, and all the court and visitors from abroad elected to follow their lead.
Among one another, the veneer of calm was not quite so polished.
Outwardly, one might not have known Rhaella had been so upset. It had showed in the queen's near nonexistent appetite - picking idly at her food, hardly anything making it past her lips. Likewise for Elia, whose paleness might simply have been the result of some mild illness. Rhaegar had been mostly expressionless, but anyone who knew him well enough would have noticed the gears in his mind working, processing the situation and all its possible meanings and outcomes.
It might mean nothing at all. It might mean everything. There was no way to know - not with any amount of certainty - and Visaera found it difficult to stifle the potency of her worry for the length of an eight-course meal which dragged on far too long.
She had spent the meal in a state of fretful detachment. Certainly not the ideal mood for a dinner companion, but Lord Dustin had been equally as untalkative and taciturn, which had suited her just fine. She had neither the energy nor patience to attempt to charm the Northman out of his grim and brooding shell; she was far too busy overthinking things she couldn't yet see to change and dearly wishing (as she suspected Rhaegar did) that this whole bloody farce of a celebration would simply be called off.
As early as she could get away with it, she had excused herself, pleading a headache - that most overused of feminine excuses - and truly did not give a fig whether Dustin read it for the lie it was. The irony was that in the hours of restless prowling she had done in her room after, she actually did end up conjuring a nagging ache to pinch at her skull.
When she begrudgingly settled to it, sleep had overtaken her swiftly, dragging her under like the tide. And perhaps that should have been a warning as to what would follow, if not one she was capable of heeding.
Visaera didn't always remember her dreams. Most of the time they were no different from those experienced, it seemed, by anyone else. She would remember feelings, inklings, upon waking, only for these too to slip away as the grains of sand through the narrow funnel of an hourglass.
The ones she did remember were almost always some combination of strange, disturbing, or horrific.
She had been walking in a castle room: a great, cavernous space, empty and cold. Only half of the ceiling remained above her, the ramparts broken and scattered about the floor, the stone of the walls and crumbled roof scorched black and dull and…melted.
Snow was falling, forming shallow drifts. She caught several of them on an open palm, and the delicate, lacy flakes were searing hot upon her skin - they crumbled rather than melting.
Not snow.
Ash.
A sound came from behind her. The rasping slither of something dragging slow and heavy across the stone. She turned toward the sound, approaching the half collapsed doorway, and stepped through it…
Then she was on the Breakwater Steps, the familiar worn, jagged teeth cut into the cliff slippery with spray. The water below surged and roiled as though with some terrible temper, and she leaned back on reflex, pressing her empty palms to the rough rock wall. The steps were too narrow, too smooth, as though three hundred years had passed and they had eroded into half of what she remembered. She glanced down, and found not water collected in slick spills beneath her bare feet, but dark blood.
Her heart stuttered in her chest.
Raiders?
Where were her boots? Where was her sword - her leathers? Where…where were the other fighting men?
The heavy slithering noise came again, this time from below. She craned her head, trying to see over the worn edge of the steps without falling, fingers curling into the comforting grooves of the cliff face at her back. At first she could see nothing apart from the angry, tossing waves - frothing white like the maw of some great rabid beast. Then she saw it…something moving, twining up along the rock in a slow, undulating crawl.
Something curled about her ankle - slippery and strangely textured, pulling like strands of muscle. She hardly had time to glance down to glimpse the sickly gray-green fleshy thing before it closed tight and pulled.
She fell back against the cliff, scrabbling for purchase as her leg was yanked out from under her. With a grunt she kicked out, her other foot glancing off the slimy surface. Completely ineffective. Another flicker of movement caught her eye, and she glanced, gritting her teeth against a screech as another thick, ropey shape slipped over the lip of the steps and she recognized the rows of round suckers lining the snakelike arm.
An arm far larger than that of any devilfish ever recorded by historian and fisherman alike.
Because it wasn't a devilfish at all.
A foul, fetid stench reached her nose, pressing in like a wall. The reek of dead water and rotting kelp, of burnt fish skin, and of old blood. Her stomach heaved and she retched, empty stomach expelling nothing.
She tried to retreat, to move back up the steps and away from the reach of the kraken's searching arm, only for the grip of the other at her ankle to tighten fiercely. Her feet slipped, skin slick with blood and sea spray. She could feel her fingernails breaking, splintering, one nearly all the way down to the bed. The second arm reached her, coiling up the arch of her foot, around her calf - plastering the leg of her breeches to her skin. It reached the back of her knee, curving into the fold of the joint before clamping savagely down.
The grip was unforgiving. She was wrenched from where she clung and pain lanced up her back as she fell hard onto the narrow steps. her cry of fear and disgust swallowed by the ocean roar. She kicked out again, in vain, and another cloud of pain rippled up her leg as the delicate bones in her left ankle crackled under the relentless, crushing squeeze.
She did screech at the snap of her leg, the tearing agony so intense that it blinded her to all else. When her vision cleared against the pounding in her brain and the splintering throb radiating from her toes all the way up into her hip, it was to find a third arm snaking up over the step, muscular and mottled like dead flesh.
The length of it gathered into a loose coil upon the eroded stone. Then, slowly, began to creep up the inside of her shattered leg.
Up and up it reached, trailing in a lazy, wandering line. Sliding along the inner crease of her thigh, the thick, fleshy length dipped into the space between her legs, dragging with deliberate slowness up the seam of her breeches.
Revulsion pooled alongside the bile in her mouth, and she retched again, convulsing with the force of it.
Relinquishing her failing grip on the rock wall, she tore at the thing, trying to shove it away, a hoarse sob wracking her throat.
A warning squeeze at her so far unbroken leg, high at the thigh, promising pain.
She stopped clawing.
Didn't I tell you that I would find you again?
The hiss of a whisper against her ear. Old words twisted into something new. In the back of her mind she saw a single black eye - glittering with a malicious satisfaction.
On the arm moved, grazing over the arc of her hip to trail around her middle. The touch was almost delicate - a slimy, slithering kiss through her shirt. It wound to encircle her ribs below her breasts and slipped around her back, up over one shoulder, the slender, tapered end circling her neck in something disturbingly near to a caress.
Not so vicious this time, are you.
The whisper came again, nearer, as if from a mouth pressed hot to her ear, molding into the mockery of a croon, dripping disdain and an awful, almost worshipful relishment.
Will you scream for me now, or will I have to break you first? I will so enjoy cracking you open, and then I will gorge…
The constriction was so slow that she didn't feel it at first. Only when she struggled on an inhale and found her lungs unable to expand did she realize she was being crushed.
Reflexively she thrashed, her arm flailing backward for the steady rock as though it had the power to save her. Her wrist was seized, pulled relentlessly back down and pinned there. She thrashed again, near to choking upon her own tongue - her own organs being forced out of place - wrenching her head away from the tender stroke at her cheek.
No…no, that wasn't right. The kraken was corpse-cold and textured, not warm and dry and smooth. This was…
"Lady Visaera!"
The grip of the nightmare shattered about her, with it, the grip of the kraken's arms.
With a sharp jolt she dragged air into her lungs. Disoriented, head reeling, she blinked back the curdled gray storm skies to find velvet draped overhead, thick and plush and the deep red of spilled wine.
Blood beneath her feet, smeared between her fingers…
"My Lady?"
She turned instinctively toward the sound, into the smooth, warm touch at her cheek. The mild, pleasant scent of leather and beeswax met her nose, chasing away the lingering reek of death.
She didn't know where she was, but she knew that was a thumb sliding across her skin, a man's face hovering over her. The shadows were thick and clinging, but she recognized the features, recognized the rich violet of his eyes. Concern drew his dark brows in and down, formed deep creases there, set his mouth in a tight, grim line.
"Are you all right?" he asked, so softly she might have imagined it.
Her lips parted, her throat working past the grip of the scream still lodged there.
Arthur.
There was no pain, no burning throb of shattered bone. No monstrous arms trying to wrench her apart. There was only the dry scrape in her throat and the pound of her heartbeat, the sweat sticky at the hollow of her throat and slick along her back. Sweat, not blood. She was alive. She was awake and in the wreckage she had made of her bed. And he was…
"What are you doing in my room?"
Was he? Was he actually here, or was it yet another phase of the nightmare offering a taste of sweetness before it yanked her sideways back into horror?
But then she felt his hand move, the soft slide of his palm against the crown of her head, fingers reaching to smooth a strand of hair from where it clung to her cheek, and that touch - tenderness limned with just a hint of worry - was enough to prove that yes, he was there with her. Real and solid and gleaming in his white cloak and armor. He was there, and she was safe.
"I heard you cry out," he said, and suddenly everything clicked into place.
Of course. He must have been on guard outside Elia's door. Had she screamed after all, then? She must have in order to bring him into her room like this. Danger to her might very well turn into danger to his prince - he would have had to be sure.
Pulling him from his duties because she couldn't keep from losing herself in her blasted sleep.
Vaguely she heard apology and explanation spilling from her tongue, a dismay and mortification fluttering in her ribs like caged, winged insects.
His hand slid from her hair and he rose from where he knelt at her bedside, turning instead to sit beside her, the bed dipping faintly with his added weight. It was only when he removed it that she fully felt the soft embrace of his other hand around her own.
The grip at her wrist, she realized, that had seized her when she fought and pinned her down. That had been him. Preventing her from doing some harm to herself, most like.
"I'm only relieved that you are not unwell."
Had she the energy, she would have laughed.
"Not entirely well," she admitted, scrubbing at her face as if she could wipe away the memory of the dream.
She couldn't. It would stick with her for days after, as the bad ones did.
The king's absence at dinner had rattled her - that much required no deep thinking to puzzle out. Whether it had affected the course of her dreams was unlikely. She knew perfectly well what had brought a kraken into her sleep and it was not Aerys or his machinations. At least, not the pettier ones. It was possible, however, that the added levels of stress had tipped the nightmare into a night terror severe enough to make her thrash and scream like a wight from a children's tale.
"My dreams are not always so violent so as to sound as though I am being murdered in my sleep," she added tiredly, "but when they are, it takes something of a toll."
The adrenaline and muddled dream-fever were waning. She was starting to feel the soreness from whatever tossing and flailing she had done in the grips of it. In her back, mostly, and some in her left arm. She had managed to fling all of her bedcovers to the floor, she noticed, though she was grateful for it. She was overheated and the cool air was soothing.
Cautiously, Visera sat up, wincing at the pinch in her lower back and immediately seeking to resolve it with a stretch. It helped. She would be feeling it come morning, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Relaxing, she looked back to Ser Arthur to find his face angled away from her. He was staring at some unseen point across the room, his jaw tight and set.
The realization struck her sharply as a slap. He had not come to her simply because it was his duty to do so. He had been afraid for her. Afraid, not simply concerned. Belatedly she recalled that she had been able to hear it in his voice, see the remnants of it as she came out of her stupor. She hadn't meant to make light of that. Did he think she had?
Impulsively she reached. The metal encasing his forearm was cool to the touch, the etched detailing of the three-headed Targaryen dragon smooth beneath her fingertips.
"You truly believed me in danger."
She hadn't really intended to say it - nonsensically pointing out the obvious. She must still be sleep-addled, though she felt perfectly awake.
Subtly he shifted. "I feared that your predictions regarding the—" a pause so slight it could hardly be called one, "—potential threat to your life might have been correct."
Visaera nodded faintly. A reasonable assumption, all things considered. It certainly would have been more efficient to simply get the matter over and done with. "You should have let me die, then," she noted practically. It would have been to his benefit, after all, might have even earned him further commendation. "He would have thanked you f—"
"I would sooner slit my own throat," he snapped, low and sharp and practically a snarl.
It shocked her: not simply the tone - so unlike anything she had hitherto heard from him - but the words themselves. Forceful, defensive, and in a way that was bound in far more than mere oathbound obligation.
It had not been an appropriate thing for a guard to have said to her.
But he had said it all the same.
Before she could think to stop it, she had rolled sideways into the arc of her hip, her knees bending until she was framing his body to one side. She was leaning forward, her hand lifted from where it had fallen, limp in her shock. And then she was brushing his face, feeling his skin warm and just a little bit rough against her palm.
Gods, he was handsome…and she really shouldn't be touching him this way. In the back of her mind she knew that any second now he would take her wrist as he had before, gently disentangle her, rise, and remove himself from her presence. Rightly so. She was entirely out of line and out of control, and desperately in need of saving from whatever madness held her clasped in its jaws.
She didn't know how to name the way he was looking at her. Oh, she knew what it looked like, knew what the flush unfurling across her skin, the hot, bleeding tension in her stomach would have had her believe. But it wasn't. It couldn't…
"Lady Visaera..."
He had never addressed her by name before. None of the Kingsguard ever did - not to her face, anyway. They referred to her by her relation to their liege, not as her own person, almost as if to remind her and themselves what she was. Yet as much effect as his saying it might have had on her, he hadn't simply said it. It had been a rumbling murmur deep in his throat and she was utterly unprepared for the effect it had, the luscious, liquid clench low in her belly.
Her fingers were sliding up into his hair, thick and soft in spite of its shorn length, and she had no idea how they had come to be there, no idea when exactly she had gotten close enough to feel his sharp exhalation of breath across her lips.
He had been so still up to now, as though gone to stone within his armor. She had thought it simply a natural response in the face of her erratic behavior, as one might have been slow and cautious with a nervous animal, but she could feel it now - the tension. Tension so dense that it was nearly unbearable, chafing the way heavy wool chafed at too-hot skin, and coiling tighter.
He was backlit by candles and banked hearth alike, his face wreathed in shadow; yet even still she could tell that his eyes were dark, lit from within like burning stars, staring at her as though he were looking into the face of his unmaking.
Her fingers curled, carding gently through his hair…and the tension snapped.
She felt metal brush her side, her ribs, felt the broad hand settle at her back to haul her roughly forward. Her knees scraped the mail at his hip, the angled edge of his pauldron bit into the flesh of her arm, but she hardly noticed either, because he had bent his head to catch her mouth and his lips were warm and soft and she couldn't have fought him had she tried. Not the arm locked like steel about her middle, not the sweet pressure of his lips. She didn't try.
Leather brushed her shoulder, strong palm curving with the shape of the bone, urging her closer still, until she was pressed flush to the hard, unyielding surface of his armor - searing cool against her breasts and belly. She shivered, a thing forged entirely of pleasure with not a hint of discomfort.
She had yielded almost immediately; there was nothing to stop him when he licked into her mouth, hot and sleek and so utterly wicked that it ripped the breath right out of her. She reeled, drunken and boneless, bracing her hand against the protective shell barring his chest from her. And what she would have given to feel him beneath her skin - the pull and flex of muscle, the throb of his pulse. She wanted to turn her nails into claws, dig them into the seams of his plate, and free him from it.
The hand at her back slid upward. His mouth softened, the tip of his tongue a light, delicate brush across her upper lip before he pressed back, harder, deeper, his fingers curling into the fabric of her gown as though he meant to tear it straight down the seam…
To say that he ripped himself away from her was not an exaggeration. One second he was there, the next she was thrust from his grasp, and he was all but shoving himself from the bed and several yards backward in a single brittle movement. She was so startled that she nearly tumbled to the floor, only just catching herself with unsteady arms before she could.
Her chest was heaving, her breath shallow, and she was…gods, she was wet. Slick and aching and how had he done this to her with no more than a kiss?
Trembling and flushed, she peered up at him, the heady, drugging effect of desire tempered brutally by the forceful extrication.
"Forgive me," he said - rasped, more like, the husky sound dragged along her spine as his hand had done seconds ago. She had to press her thighs tightly together to stem the empty pang. "I should not have…"
Through the shadow she could see that he looked stricken, guarded, his eyes oddly haunted. The look of a man who believed he had done something horribly, morally wrong.
It almost stung, that look. Or, it would have had she not understood his character the way she did.
She remembered the way he had addressed the lord that had tried to force himself on her all those weeks ago - the icy judgment and condemnation. She remembered the way he had gripped the man by the arm to murmur what she was certain had been some quiet promise of retribution should he touch her again. In her head, the comparison was almost laughable, yet she would wager everything she owned that Arthur believed he had somehow taken advantage of her in much the same way.
Ser Arthur, she corrected herself firmly.
While, no, he would not have been as easy to fend off as that skinny, wine-soaked excuse for a lord had been, and she had no weapon on her, she knew plenty of ways to force a man to release her - even one so heavily armored. She could have grabbed for one of the knives at his belt and shoved it into his relatively unguarded throat. Though she wouldn't have had to. He would not have held her against her will, of that she was more certain than she was almost anything else. Which was the entire point.
Instinctively she sought to reassure him, to remind him that propriety and chivalry be damned, she had made no protest nor any sign that she had wanted to be anywhere but in his arms.
"It was freely given, not theft."
"Even so," he murmured, and while it was acknowledgement of a sort, he seemed determined in his refusal to absolve himself. "I should not have done you the dishonor."
Wry amusement kindled, wrapped in the lingering bittersweetness of the shattered moment, and she laughed, unable to contain it.
Did he seriously think her some wide-eyed untouched virgin to be sullied by a kiss? Surely there had been rumors aplenty to dissuade that assumption, plenty of whispers that Blackfyre's bastard daughter was no chaste, proper maiden - suitable to her tainted blood. The nobility, after all, loved nothing better than to put a self-possessed woman back in her place by deeming her a whore…
But, no. This had nothing to do with her honor. Oh, it did to him, certainly, but that was not the most pressing issue.
She truly must have been addled in the head if she had somehow managed to forget who he was - forget that he was forbidden to touch a woman the way he had just touched her. The way she had touched him first.
"If anyone is dishonored here," she began slowly as the understanding spread, cold and unforgiving, "it is I who have dishonored you."
Disbelief streaked across his face, and perhaps something like pain. Neither made sense to her. She would grant that it was nowhere near as common, but surely he had to know as well as she did that such an insult could be done to men as much as to women - for a man in his position more easily than most. Just being alone in the room with her this long was enough to smear his reputation, even if they hadn't gone within ten feet of one another. But pain, or whatever else it might have been…that she could not fathom without the risk of scraping something desolate and fragile and far too close to the surface.
The emotion was only there for the time it took her to blink. When her eyes opened again, he had forced all of it down behind an impassive mask fit to rival her own most flawless shield.
"You have done nothing to require forgiveness from me."
There was nothing sharp or cutting about the remark. It was a statement of reassurance, perfectly proper and wielded gently, yet the rigid formality of it - of the bow which followed - raked her to the bone.
Quiet as a ghost, he slipped out into the hallway, and she was abandoned to the racing tumult of her thoughts. Left scrambling to understand why she felt as though she had been kicked in the chest by a horse.
...
With a practiced, silent glide Elia pulled her needle up through the linen pulled taut between the wooden rings of the stitching hoop, the yellow thread it towed so pure and bright that it might have been a spun strand of sunlight taken straight from those limning the spill of dark curls down her back. It had been full-sun all morning - a rare and thoroughly savored gift in winter along the Narrow Sea, though it did tend to make it difficult to want to much other than bask in the warm pools of light.
"Oberyn wrote me last week," she said, "to ask if we would be taking our trip to the Water Gardens next month."
Ashara glanced up from where she sat across the window from the princess, her hand never pausing at her own stitches. "What are you going to tell him?"
Elia sighed upon a shrug; slender, fine-boned face wistful. "That I'm not sure yet. Though I hope we will. I would put up with any amount of winter roads without complaint to wake up to the birds singing."
"Oh, the honeycreepers!" Ashara exclaimed, beaming fondly. "With their darling little blue tongues. Did I tell you how I begged and begged my mother to keep one as a pet? She would always tell me: wild things must stay wild. But oh, how I wanted one."
"You never told me that! For the longest time I was convinced their wings were never still, that they hovered about even when sleeping. Imagine my shock when I finally saw one perched. I had no idea what it was—"
Tugging carefully, Visara plucked at the snarl in a tangled bundle of colored thread as she listened to the other two women exchange lighthearted, somewhat wistful reminiscence of their shared homeland. Listening, but not really hearing, though not for lack of trying. Every time she tried to pay attention, her mind would make no more than a halfhearted grab for the conversation, and simply allow it to slip away.
If either Elia or Ashara took notice of her uncharacteristic quiet that afternoon, they made neither indication nor mention of it. Likely they assumed she was preoccupied by all the impending demands on her time, or else by the matter of last night's dinner - things she ought to have been preoccupied with - and she was content to let them think it.
With a twist of her fingers she pulled another knot free. She moved on to the next, winding the free thread as she went and grateful to have something to do with her hands that required minimal mental concentration. Since her mind seemed so intent upon wandering.
She was, in a word, distracted. But not by the things she should be.
By some miracle she had managed to drift back to sleep last night, and upon waking her first thought had been a fleeting, recollection memory of her dream - vivid enough to bring the hot-metal tang of nausea and gooseflesh to her pebble her skin.
She had expected to find her throat sore and hoarse from screaming. It hadn't been, which was odd. It would not have been the first time she had woken up voiceless after a dream as bad as that one - and it had been bad. Not as violent or gruesome as some, but so visceral that it had successfully tricked her mind into thinking it real, the sting of shredded fingertips and shattered bones lingering after she had woken.
It was because she had woken, she realized. She hadn't had the time to scream herself raw. Ser Arthur had roused her before she could.
She had never come out of a night terror like that so quickly or smoothly before. It had been as though his voice and his grip upon her hand had pulled her gently back into reality, grounded her, guided her into the sense of where and when she was. It had been caring and attentive and, yes, sweet. He had stroked her hair, though it had surely been a matted, sweaty mess, soothing her, assuring her that she was sheltered, protected. That if there were monsters, even if only in the black, twisted recesses of her own mind, he would not allow them near her.
Her memory became somewhat blurred at that point. She knew there had been some exchange of words, though she couldn't remember what exactly had been said. Nor did she remember exactly how things had shifted so abruptly.
Though she did remember - with perfect and shocking clarity - what had followed.
Her lips seemed to warm at the unbidden memory of his kiss. The unexpected fervor of it. Had she imagined anything (and she had tried not to), she would have imagined something tentative, not…
She'd had her share of lovers, enough of them to feel relatively experienced in the subject, but none of them had ever kissed her like that. As though they might die if they didn't.
Immensely grateful that her skin didn't tend to reflect any sort of blush, Visaera tucked the newly tidied skein of thread into a basket and picked up another, spreading the knotted tangle across her lap.
This was really not the time or place to be thinking about such things…but she really couldn't stop thinking about it. She couldn't stop feeling the soft weight of his eyes on her - at once delicate and obscene. The almost helpless way he had pulled her to him. The press of his mouth and the hot glide of his tongue, the slow, half desperate caress up her back. She couldn't stop her mind from repeatedly spiraling to places it shouldn't; such as what might have happened had he followed the path of her spine down insead. Broad, powerful hand sliding to grip her by the backside.
She would have let him. Hell, she would have let him do far more than that. He could have done anything he wanted with her…
Except that he couldn't.
And neither could she.
In the moment she hadn't been able to retain a grasp on why it had been so unwise, why it had been anything less than as wonderful as it had felt to be held tight and close and sheltered. It hadn't truly hit her until after he had gone, and the full implication of what had happened - and the accompanying guilt - had settled like a great sodden weight across her shoulders.
She hadn't intended for any of it. Of course she hadn't, but that was no excuse. She'd had no business touching him. He was a knight of the bloody Kingsguard…and he had let her.
He had let her.
If she had forgotten herself, it was no more than he had. Though she could hardly hold that against the poor man when she had been little better than naked.
As a rule, she didn't sleep in anything that was too heavy or substantial. She tended to run warm as it was and overheated very easily in the night. Of all the nightdresses she owned, that one in particular was rather more daring than the others, and of course it would be the one she had chosen last night. Granted, she had had no way of knowing that she would dream so violently that it called a guard into her room to ensure she wasn't being gutted in her bed.
Once woken, she had been disoriented and half feverish and hadn't been aware of herself to remember that if he wasn't seeing all of her, he was certainly seeing more than was in any way decent. If she had been, she would have sought something with which to shield herself. She felt no shame in regard to her body - it was only flesh, after all - but the vulnerability of being so immodest with a man she was not intimate with would usually have made her starkly uncomfortable, uncertain whether they would use it as an excuse to take liberties. But she hadn't even noticed. How much of that was because she had been dazed and how much because she had foolishly imagined him incapable of seeing her in such a way?
Visaera was not so naive as to believe that swearing an oath not to act upon them had magically rid him of whatever desires he might have. Things were not that simple and he was only a man, if an extraordinary man. But he was schooled in rigorous patience and control, and - it stood to reason - incredible willpower.
Ser Arthur Dayne was not a man to give in to just any passing temptation. A day ago she would have sworn on her knees at the feet of the Seven that nothing she could do or say would ever be sufficient enough to cause him to press the bounds of that oath. And no matter how many times she told herself that it meant nothing, that it had just been a matter of lapsed restraint, a momentary slip in decorum, she knew better.
It hadn't been some fumbled, clumsy thing she could brush off as a there-and-gone reflex to be instantly regretted. It had been purposeful, and intense. Had handled her with far too much consideration to dismiss it as nothing more than a random, ill-timed surge of empty lust. If his restraint had lapsed, it was only because he had allowed it to.
Physical allure was not the same as emotional connection. She was not a child - she understood this. It was clear that he felt protective of her, but it was his job to be so. It was not intrinsically connected to any desire he might have for her. And yet it had been easy for her to imagine that he might…
She silenced the thought.
Choices made in the dead hours, in the dark and the soft glow of firelight, were not always the choices one would have made in the light of day. When thinking clearly, when the restrictions and responsibilities of one's life returned in full force, those choices might look very different - whatever their motivations. Something clandestine and forbidden might feel romantic when aloneness pressed close and crushing, but prove stupidly, perilously naive an hour later.
And it had been stupid - a reckless, mindless, dangerous mistake.
Whatever either of them might or might not have felt, their lives were not their own, and neither of them had the luxury to make such a costly misstep a second time.
It had been rather romantic, though…
Visaera forced a terse breath between her teeth. Damn and blast it, she was not this much of a fool. They did not live in a ballad spun some honey-voiced bard - some pretty, gleaming fairy tale featuring noble knights and swooning maidens with a bit of a filthy tavern twist. Reality was not pretty. It was bloody and brutal and indifferent.
She could no longer afford a distraction like this. Nor, she suspected, was she quite so capable of stomaching the heartbreak she courted as she once had been. She had to let it go.
A soft knock sounded at the door, breaking through the muddled mess in her head.
No longer primed to leap quite so quickly to the defensive, she simply lifted her eyes to the wood rather than reach for the blade at her wrist - which, in truth, would have been somewhat challenging with her fingers wrapped up in a knot of threads.
"Yes," Elia called and with a soft whisper of iron hinges, the door drew open by several inches to reveal Sew Lewyn outside.
"Your Grace," he said with a bow of his head. "Mistress Redding has arrived, as requested."
"Thank you, Uncle," Elia said, the smile sweet at her lips.
Visaera glanced back to the knight, the faint hints of resemblance there suddenly all the more apparent. An answering smile deepened the creases at the man's eyes, soft with affection. Were all the high families of Dorne so openly loving, she wondered? Would that some of the more northern ones noted the example.
The princess rose from her seat, setting her sewing upon her empty chair and walking to the door as her ladies followed suit, Ser Lewyn escorting them down from Elia's solar to one of the rooms used to receive guests.
Myna Redding had begun her career some thirty years back as an assistant to a seamstress and with the aid of innate skill, toil, and sheer determination, was now one of the most talented dressmakers in all of King's Landing. She was not the most lauded - that particular honor went to a Master Kellan Faleweather - but she was undoubtedly the best. And Elia, who had a fondness for patronizing female business owners, had never commissioned anyone else for her gowns since setting foot in the city.
"Your Grace," Mistress Redding greeted, her plump form sinking into a curtsey as elegant as that of any high lady, strands of hastily pinned iron-gray hair slipping about her neck. Then, formality observed, the woman moved forward, hands extended to grasp those Elia proffered. "All this sun looks well on you, my dear. How are you? And my darling Lady Ashara."
Ashara glided forward, cheerful returning the older woman's embrace.
Visaera, though she remained on the periphery of the moment, did not feel excluded by it. She was pleased enough to have welcome into this positive sphere of other women especially, today when her attention was spotty at best.
With a flourish, Mistress Redding turned to indicate the swaths of colorful fabric hanging from a portable rack in the center of the room, and the narrow white boxes stacked upon each of the little decorative tables behind.
"I've brought a wide selection suitable for such occasions—only the best, mind…"
Visaera watched, smile playing on her lips, as the artisan and her two assistants deftly stripped the two ladies down to their underthings and whisked new gowns over their heads to begin the process of fitting. She offered herself in the service of holding pins and fetching matching belts or slippers from the array of boxes, the talk of hemming and lengthening sleeves fading into a pleasant background noise.
And it was pleasant. It was a blissfully lovely day, uncustomarily warm from the constant sun. She was well and safe (as much as she could be) and in the company of women she admired and might have considered to be friends of a kind. There was no reason to be so inexplicably melancholy.
Was she near to her monthly? She always found herself more maudlin and silly than made sense right before.
Doing a quick calculation in her head, she estimated she had about two days before the bleeding started. She would need to ask one of her maids to gather some cloths tonight.
Annoying though it was, she had always been fortunate in that her monthly was so regular and easily managed - many women were not so lucky. Princess Elia for one, who suffered from widely irregular cycles, heavy bleeding, and awful, lingering pains in her head and abdomen, the poor lamb. She bore it with a stoic resolve, but Visaera was able to discern now when and how badly the pain took.
In the years of their friendship, Ashara had developed strategies to ease and distract Elia during these times, which Visaera took eager part in learning and replicating when she could. Ashara, like her brother, was naturally steady, and appeared to take a sense of gratification from being supportive. She possessed a sharper tongue, and was open with her wit, but - as she had claimed before - Arthur had been a quieter, more introspective soul from childhood.
What would Ashara say had she known her fellow lady in waiting had (unintentionally) come on to her brother? Would she be angry on his behalf? Would she warn her away? Ashara needn't have worried.
Visaera could not steer clear of him completely. She had responsibility to Rhaegar, after all - had given an oath of her own to do so - and she would not break it. But where she could, she would do so. She wanted no part in causing him any further difficulty or discomfort.
The fact that she had already done so shamed her quite deeply.
"—and this I brought especially for Lady Targaryen…"
It took Visaera a moment to realize she was being addressed, and when she did it was with a small start, nearly sending a dish of pins scattering across the floor.
"Forgive me, I was…somewhere else."
She looked to Mistress Redding, who held a swath of richy embroidered crimson fabric draped across her arms in beguiling invitation, expression at once hopeful and pleased, evidently quite proud of the piece.
"Oh—I'm sorry, I don't…wear red." Visaera said with a twinge of discomfort.
Elia, utterly resplendent in a stunning creation of seafoam green, turned to her with a frown. "Whyever not?"
"I'm not a Targaryen," she reminded the room at large. "Not truly."
"Nonsense," Ashara argued flatly as the girl seated upon a stool at her feet contentedly added a temporary hemline to luxurious plum velvet with a quick, efficient whipstitch. Ashara adjusted the set of her sleeve across her shoulder and cast Visaera a pointed glance. "It was your mother's house, therefore it's your house."
Visaera wasn't sure she could agree with that sentiment, however well-meaning. Taking any sort of ownership or belonging with a name that took her only grudgingly was not something that came easily to her. Yet…there would have been naive to ignore the potential gain from such an ownership.
There was value in appearing more powerful than she was, after all, and such a reminder need not be for her. Likely wouldn't be, in fact.
Graceful as any consummate outfitter must be, Mistress Redding turned smoothly back to the rack. "I also have something similar in a very becoming rose—"
"No," Visaera said, giving in, "let's try this one."
With a satisfied smile, Mistress Redding approached her, letting the yards of heavy blood-red silk unfurl across her arm with a muted sigh, silver threads alight with the tell-tale glitter of miniscule glass beads.
Silver, not black. That was acceptable. So long as she steered clear of the onyx of the other side of her heritage, she should be all right.
"Ranel," the mistress called, "come help Lady Targaryen off with her dress, please."
The girl scurried to do so and Visera relinquished the pins, turning to offer the laces at her back with another silent sigh.
...
In the fantasy, he wore no armor.
Everything else occurred exactly as had in reality, but for that single, crucial difference. No awkward steel or heavy mail, no blasted gauntlets, just a shirt and trousers affording at once ease of movement and feeling.
Well…that difference, and one other.
He did not blanch and retreat at the urge to rend the gossamer dress, and he did not pull away.
In the fantasy, she gasped at the sharp tearing of fragile fabric as his hand twisted and shredded the thing straight down the middle - splitting the seams at her shoulders - but not with any fear or alarm. He had surprised her, that was all. She didn't fight when he folded it away, nor when he dragged his hand down the graceful line of her bare back.
Down, this time, not up. Down to the lush curve and swell of her arse.
Her skin was hot, as though she burned just beneath, down to her veins.
Fire and blood, indeed.
He gripped more tightly and pressed her closer still, up onto his lap - soft, strong thighs falling open to frame him. Slender hands braced against his shoulders, slid around the back of his neck, the sensuous arch of her spine pushing her breasts upward, nipples flushed and beaded tight. He bent his head, setting his mouth to one, feeling the vibration of her keening moan at the rasp of his tongue.
Her hips rolled forward, pressing the hot, sweet place between her thighs into the ridge of his cock. He hissed at the sharp stab of pleasure, using every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep from bucking up into her like a beast.
Silver hair tumbled around her shoulders, a wild curtain of moonlight spilling over the bend of his arm as he forced her to sit back. His palm followed the slope of her belly, feeling the curl of her hands against his back. He half expected to feel the prick of claws, and would have been neither alarmed nor chagrined.
He found her wet and swollen with need, delicate flesh parting as he stroked, as sword-callused fingers slid inside the silken clasp of her body. He did feel her claws then, scraping against the nape of his neck as she gripped him by the hair and wrenched his head back - almost to the point of pain, but not quite that far. She kissed him, hard and fierce, catching his lip between her teeth and biting sweetly, rocking herself into his hand.
A sound met his ears, clashing with the cadence of his own broken groan. A dull clatter, steel upon stone, completely out of place in the scene in his head.
He jerked, abruptly and widely awake. He did not reach for his sword, understanding instantly where he was and that it had been one of his sworn brothers readying for their guard shift which had jarred him from sleep.
He had not always been quick to rouse, but from boyhood he had wanted to be a knight and knights were soldiers. A good soldier slept lightly. So his training masters had assigned early lessons, arranged to have him woken in the night for surprise sessions, and never once had he allowed a complaint to pass his lips. No matter how many times he was woken for something trivial or unimportant, he was only ever annoyed to a point, for he couldn't be angry when the next time might be the one when a timely waking saved his life - or someone else's.
Tonight, however, Arthur grit his teeth against the growl of unmistakable and emphatic protest, and cursed in breathless silence.
He was fully, desperately hard, close to throbbing in his smallclothes. And, unfortunately, he had full recollection of why.
Rolling onto his back, he squeezed his eyes shut and breathed - slowly and deeply to counter the frantic pitch of his pulse. In his throat, in his head, in his groin.
Never in his life had he been more grateful that the Kingsguard were given the luxury of their own private sleeping cells rather than shared quarters or a barracks like the palace guard. Things like this would have proved much more awkward with a witness, though they did happen, circumstances being what they were.
Normally he would have dismissed it as an annoyance, ignored it, and gone back to sleep. There was no ignoring this.
It had been some time, he granted that, but if he had to guess, he had been perhaps a few moments away from spilling in his sleep like a boy. And, well, that wasn't as shocking to him as it might have been a week ago. Not after…
Fuck, he could still feel her - the easy slide of feather-thin silk across her skin and the curl of her fingers in his hair.
His gut clenched, hard. The muscle deep in his thighs and in his lower back giving a low, insistent whine that danced along the edge of pain.
Gods' teeth.
He considered it, just for a moment - a long moment - taking himself in hand and sinking back into the fantasy for just a little while longer. Just enough to ease the tension. But even as his knuckles ground against the linens, he found he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Allowing himself to think of her in such a way would only reinforce feelings he should not have had in the first place. It was one thing to feel desire for the idea of a woman in general, but it was very different to desire one in particular, and to such an extent.
He was not a boy. It was not as though he had never been enticed by a woman before. There was no reason he should find himself so unable to control his own bloody responses.
Warrior pierce him for a liar - there was every reason. The moment he'd seen her in those damn trousers he'd as good as broken his vows and he knew it. Yet he refused to do her the insult of reducing her to a tool used for the banishment of an unwanted erection.
If he could maintain nothing else of his self respect, this was a line he would not cross.
With another silent curse he tossed back the bedclothes. Rising stiffly, resisting the urge to adjust the lay of his clothing, he crossed the cramped room to the plain wooden table and the ewer waiting there for his morning wash. Ignoring the basin completely, he lifted the pitcher and poured the icy water directly over his head.
A thick shudder wracked his body at the sudden, bitter chill, and he reached for a drying cloth shaking water from his eyes.
Arthur had a strong, bone-deep dislike of the cold. He had been born in a warm climate, one much less harsh and unforgiving as that of the capitol. His first winter here had been one spent in utter misery, as a squire of fourteen with a near constant head cold. Though he was accustomed to it now, and could see the beauty in the winters here, he would never like the temperatures when they dipped low enough that he could see the fog of his own breath.
It was not quite so cold this morning - for it was morning, he realized, if only just. No mist upon his trembling exhale. The water had done its work, at least, in abating the worst of the physical affliction, though it hadn't been quite enough to banish the knot of tension caught beneath his sternum.
For a fleeting moment, he felt the faintest stirring of resentment, which he immediately regretted and dismissed.
She would not have been the only woman (or man), high born or otherwise, to amuse herself by flaunting her charms in front of one or more of them, that much was true. Though this was often the source of as much ire as amusement when every woman who imagined she would be the one to lure a Kingsguard from his convictions subsequently failed. Visaera was certainly capable of such a deception at her most alert and focused, but hardly in the wake of a nightmare so awful that she had entirely misplaced where she was. And from the look of distress he had left her with, he knew that was not her way.
It had not been her intention to goad him into ravishing her, more's the pity.
His pulse spiked in his throat, and he gritted his teeth.
Enough, damn it.
He all but fled his room: dragging on layers of clean clothes, grabbing his sword, and heading straight for the stables. In less than ten minutes he had his horse saddled and was riding out through the main gate, headed for the southeastern wall of the city, and the Goldroad beyond.
Half a mile down, the road passed a shallow hill on the far side of which lay the ruined remnants of what the historians surmised had once been a watchtower. Most of the time it was deserted, as no one had a need to go there. When Arthur found himself in need of distance from the city and its shadows, it was here that he went - sometimes simply for escape, for a place to sit and be, sometimes to train.
Today it was most assuredly the latter.
Only after spending nearly two hours on drills and another on a light nap did he feel he had regained enough mastery over himself to return and go about his daily tasks. By the time he was passing the gatehouse and back onto the grounds of the red keep, the sun was fully up and it was morning in earnest.
There was an extra bit of commotion upon his return, the outer yard swarming with extra bodies in the recognizable bustle which heralded travel. Arriving, rather than going, by his guess; likely another noble guest of Rhaegar's (rather, Tywin's).
Moving around the tumult of men and horses, he led his gelding back toward the stables - a huge gray beast that tiny Allyria had decreed resembled a soot sprite. From that point on, he was Soot, and Arthur no longer remembered what name had come before. The horse, for his size, was a patient, tolerant animal and far less bothered by the chaos than his master.
It was as they were pausing to allow a wagon piled high with sacks of grain to pass that Arthur noticed the colors the men bore. Standards and surcoats halved in red and white.
Connington colors.
"Jon!"
The piercing screech emanated across the yard almost as if on the very wings of the thought as he had it.
His head craned back, scanning the mill of road-weary bodies for the source of the voice that brought the gentle flutter to the pit of his stomach.
There. A bright streak of silver amidst the bustle, skirt hiked up about her calves and mud caking her slippers and a look of pure, glorious elation on her face.
One of the men still mounted gave a shout and leapt from his saddle to surge forward just as Visaera reached him. Seizing her full about the waist, he swept her right off the ground and spun her about, his laugh full and loud and rife with just a hint of mischief in the face of her demand to be put down this instant.
The differences between them were startling. Visaera was small and elegantly shaped in the way of Targaryen women, though with a bit more curve in choice places than her cousin and likely her mother, who, like the queen, was said to have had difficulty in the birthing bed. She looked delicate as a fawn in contrast to broad, stocky Connington, solid and bearded, his hair so red that it seemed afire with copper and orange. Still, any observer could see the bond between them, as evidenced by the playful - and undoubtedly forceful, if the jerk of impact were any indication - smack she delivered straight to the center of his chest.
"What in the name of the Smith's iron bollocks are you doing here?"
Arthur curbed a snort at the casual, ribald blasphemy, which he really shouldn't find so charming.
"You didn't say anything about visiting in your last letter, you great bloody oaf," she exclaimed, her tone chiding for all that her eyes were alight with pleasure.
"I'm suddenly reminded as to all the things I didn't miss," Jon mused with dry humor, rubbing at his ribs where she had struck him. "Could you at least wait until after lunch to beat me black and blue? We've been riding all night and I'm fair tempted to start gnawing on my poor horse."
There was the faintest hint of something fragile in Visaera's answering peal of laughter, but before Arthur could have hoped to examine the details of her expression from halfway across the yard, she had wound her arms about the young man's middle and buried her face in the furs bristling at the collar of his cloak.
Connington's posture softened, one gloved hand lifting to rest against her back and his head lowering to murmur: "I've missed you like hell, Saera."
When she drew back, Visaera's expression held no sign of any emotion beyond the sweet, simple happiness at the arrival of her foster brother.
"See to your poor horse then so we can feed you—"
"I'll see to that, M'lady."
This from one of the men standing by to whom she sent a smile so brilliantly beautiful that it knocked Arthur's breath away for all that it had not been directed so much in his direction.
"You are a jewel among men, Cole," she proclaimed.
The soldier tossed a fondly dismissive hand. "Git on, now, the both of you."
Wrapping an arm about Connington's elbow, Visaera towed him off toward the kitchens, not seeming to notice that the hem of her dress was collecting a respectable coat of mud, or that another pair of eyes watched her go.
Though his horse was gracious enough to allow Arthur a moment to moon after the flash of a silver braid, with a gentle nudge to his shoulder Soot politely reminded his master that they had been on their way back to the stables for hot mash and a brushing - plans which he would quite like to see about accomplishing now. Or perhaps it was a reminder to keep his eyes where they belonged, which was well away from Lady Targaryen.
With a self-depreciative chuckle, Arthur ran a hand down the gelding's dark velvety nose. "Yes, thank you," he sighed, and resumed walking. "Let's see to your breakfast."
NOTES:
All I'm going to say is thank goodness for long holiday weekends. I would dearly prefer to keep riding whatever mania helped me crank this out over the better part of the last three days rather than go back to real life. Please make it so. (That said, I finished this as of just now and it may have a couple errors. Please excuse them in my eagerness to get this posted asap.)
I've read a couple fics where Arthur is depicted as somewhat blushy and naïve, which doesn't really line up in my head. Even if that had been the case at one point, we all know the man has seen some things by now. As Visaera think/says, promises don't magically get rid of preexisting proclivities, and at least in the show, Dornish culture is portrayed as being a bit more liberal in terms of sexuality than most of the rest of Westeros. Technically that would make Visaera the weird one, but swooning maidens aren't really my speed, and to be honest, in none of my attempts to sort out the plotting of this fic could I see that having much of an impact on our dashing celibate knight, here. Give him a woman able and willing to at least try handing him his ass, on the other hand…well. That's a different story.
Also – yo, if last chapter's hints weren't enough, here is your warning that this story is going to get raunchy, and it's only going to increase from here. Let's be real, we all know why we're here. Ok? Ok.
On with the notes:
The theme of prophecy is both significant and never quite what we might expect from typical fantasy in the world of GoT. Which is something I really like, and intend to explore a little further in this fic. Many of the Targaryen kings/queens experienced dreams which they believed to be foretellings or a version of the sight, some of the more famous of which end up leading to pretty horrible outcomes through attempts to realize them (i.e. the tragedy at Summerhall). Though how these people thought they could tell the difference between prophetic visions and just brains being brains, we aren't really told. Which bodes the question – now and later – are Visaera's dreams actually dragon dreams, or does she just have a sleep disorder? Or both?
Speaking of which: this particular dream of hers was really uncomfortable for me to write, because it's intended to thinly imply sexual violence as well as plain, good old fashioned violence, and I know more about the why than is clear right now (obviously). I squicked myself out a bit, hence the warning at the beginning of the chapter, but that's the point, so I kept it. Bleh.
'Devilfish' is an old-ass name for an octopus, used here because I could not get around how un-GoT the word OCTOPUS felt. So consider it a Stormlands colloquialism, meant more along the lines of crafty and clever, rather than demonic, which is what the kraken is.
I don't know how much I plan on using the same-scene-from-the-opposite-POV tactic for this fic. So far I haven't really done so, just loosely touched on pieces here and there when relevant, but I might do so for more important moments – such as this one.
Jon has arrived! I haven't written a lot of him yet but so far I really enjoy his relationship with Visaera. Found family is an important subject to me personally, so even if his part in the narrative is small, it is significant.
Lastly - the amount of follows and favorites this story has gotten for how short it is so far is...incredible, and I am at something of a very touched loss. I'm going to be that person and beg of you, please, consider throwing a stressed-out writer a comment if you can. They are gold and I am in sore need of the positivity. Thank you and bless you.
Until next time - be well!