.
PART EIGHT
Converse
... ... ...
"Are you sure we're allowed to be alone unchaperoned?"
Visaera looked up sharply, brows raised.
Jon wore an expression of mild concern as he bent to sit in the wide upholstered chair across from her. He was glancing about the expanse of the private library, almost as though he expected someone to come leaping out from behind one of the shelves to deliver a forceful scolding - going so far as to eye the marble statues placed throughout as though he thought them spies of some sort.
"Seeing as you're, ah…at the showy front stall of the marriage market, as it were, and you and I are—"
"Oh for fuck's sake, Griff," she groused, slipping in his childhood petname as emphasis while she toed the slippers from her feet. "We were alone so many times at the Roost, and it was never an issue."
Raising his hands in defensive placation, Jon shrugged, countering: "I know that. It's just…things are different here, that's all."
Her mouth opened, a scathing retort ready upon her tongue, which she promptly swallowed.
However she might feel about the matter, it was no fault of his that the situation in King's Landing was the way it was, or that those in residence might abruptly decide the fact that they shared no blood suddenly turned them into prime breeding ground for scandal. He wasn't wrong to ask the question, and she had no right to take his head off for it.
"Maybe," she acknowledged instead, running a hand along the cushion beneath her.
She had come to love the chairs in the lower private library almost to the point of it becoming covetous - roomy and lushy upholstered with flocked velvet. The musty, ink-rich smell of the books and the herbal sachets used to combat dampness combined with the hearth-fire to create a close, warmly cozy atmosphere, which had made the room one of her favorites to spend time in. As it was only ever in use by the royal family and their guests, and even then only rarely, she had thought it would be a nice spot to continue catching up once it grew too cold and dark to walk outside.
It hadn't occurred to her that the shift in setting might warrant a change in how their spending time together might appear. No one had mentioned the matter to her…but, then again, his presence hadn't been expected in advance. It was possible no one had known to tell her that it would be better for her to go chaperoned if she elected to be in his company.
As he'd said, things were different here. This was not Griffin's Roost, where those older than and of an age with themselves remembered they had been raised as siblings, and where those younger saw they clearly viewed one another as such. There was and would always be gossip built upon crude and lurid supposition, but it hadn't mattered there the way it might matter here, and now with her facing marriage to any of a number of lords who would likely expect her to at least act virtuous, even if she wasn't…well, that was another thing to contend with.
Drawing in a decisive inhale, she gave a nonchalant shrug.
"You're my family. They're not going to take that from me along with everything else. The door is open," she noted, lifting bare toes in indication of the door which did, in fact, stand open. "And…well, frankly I don't much care. Unless you do?"
Jon's full lips quirked to one side in a saucy half-smile. "All I care about is not inadvertently getting you into undue trouble," he drawled.
Leaning against the arm of her chair, she adjusted her skirts and drew up her knees, tucking her feet comfortably beneath her.
"If it's a problem, I'll simply explain that I didn't realize it would be one given that I haven't been a maid for over a decade."
"Oh, yes." A low chuckle. "That will smooth it all over."
She gave another uncaring shrug - this one with a hint of exaggerated flare. "Perhaps all my noble suitors will decide to look elsewhere. That would be a true and terrible shame."
Propping an elbow on the arm of his own chair, Jon rested his chin in his palm and gave her an amused look. He shared his father's broad, square jaw, proud nose (several times broken), and unruly mane of red curls. His gray-green eyes - what Stormlanders deemed an indicator of seawater running thick in the blood - were his mother's, and currently held a teasingly pitying light.
"I do hate to be the one to tell you this," he mused, with a regret far too jovial to be taken seriously, "but I think you may be underestimating your value, just a fraction."
She snorted. "Tripe."
Lifting his other hand he began slowly, pointedly counting off with his fingers. "Royal blood. All the prestige, power, and influence therein. You're within the prime of your childbearing years, so half-royal children. And you just so happen to be stunning."
"Tripe."
"Fact. Combine all that and I think the issue that you've had a cock or two before now ceases to be quite so relevant."
"Or two?" Smacking her head back against the overstuffed velvet, she let out a crowing laugh.
Jon rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Yes, yes, your prowess is much more impressive than implied, begging your pardon. I was being poetic."
She laughed again, fondness creeping into her voice in spite of herself. "You're being a prat."
"My point is," he continued, talking cheerfully over her, "that it's not going to matter. You could fuck me right here—in front of a whole gaggle of gossipy court peahens—and plenty of lords would still fight over your hand."
"You don't seriously believe that."
Back was the faintly pitying slant to his smile. He shook his head, red hair gleaming brilliant burning copper in the hearth-light. "I don't believe it, I know it. I've heard it. Lord Swann put his eldest son's name in the running early on, back when it was still a rumor that brokering marriage might have been one of the reasons you were summoned."
Visaera's eyes widened, her stomach pitching so hard and fast that she half expected it to roll out onto the flagstones of the floor.
The Swanns were a powerful house, but more than that, they were proud. Their current ruling lord was stern and self-important, and the only reason his heir remained unwed was because he was dissatisfied with most available prospects - or said prospects' dowries. Yet he had offered for her? A lord with a known distaste for ladies who so much as raised an eye out of line had offered for her…when it was widely known throughout the Stormlands that she was shameless and brash and ill-behaved?
That sobered her right and quick.
She had been toying with the idea that allowing more of her true self to show might help her shed some of this unwanted attention, believing it would be enough to accomplish that end. Apparently the full weight of her worth as it was to an outside perspective was just one more thing she hadn't taken into account.
For a long moment she was speechless, wallowing in the ruin of her half-assembled plan, until finally Jon broke into her scattered thoughts with a murmur.
"I could marry you."
Her chin jerked as she lifted her face to stare at him.
"Are you completely off your daft head?" she demanded, incredulous. "The King would no more allow that than he would my marrying Swann. He doesn't want me anywhere near the power or the influence I have in the Stormlands."
He seemed to consider this, only to offer a shrug of his own, the soft walnut brown leather of his jerkin pulling tight across his shoulders as he did. "We could elope…"
"And lose our heads for it?" She gave a thoroughly humorless bark of laughter and shook her head. "I think not."
It was partially a jest, but only partially. She could imagine the force and the reach of Aerys' wrath were she to disobey so flagrantly, and it was not worth courting, even for the slim possibility that he decided not to deem it worth pursuing.
"Besides," she added with a lopsided smile, "we wouldn't suit."
Jon answered her smile with a wry one of his own, chin tilted at a rakish angle. "You must admit there would be convenience there. Neither of us need go wanting."
By that logic, it might have seemed a neat solution; each to provide the other with the shield and security that a spouse could offer. He would be safe to be exactly who he was, as would she. No extraneous demands or expectations to go unfulfilled. The benefit of prior-existing affection and understanding, and the mutual freedom to take lovers as they wished.
"I grant you that," she admitted, "but if I'm to have both husband and lover, I prefer them to be one and the same for the sake of my sanity. And be serious, we would drive one another straight off the cliffs from sheer vexation."
There was another issue with this hypothetical arrangement, though one best kept silent in a place where any wall might possess eyes or ears to witness it.
Being the heir to a noble house, Jon would someday be expected to father at least one heir of his own. An expectation made a great deal more difficult to meet by his total lack of sexual interest in women. It was a topic they had discussed at length before, as his father kept subtly probing at when Jon might consider finally settling down to his duty - increasingly more often since his eighteenth year had come and gone - with narry a real, tangible solution to be found.
Visaera had always been empathetic about the matter. Not only for the sake of wishing her foster brother freedom from such a burden, but also for the sake of all he had to do to maneuver around it - and what all he might yet have to do. She had also known that were she ever to find herself pregnant, by error or (gods forbid) by force, all she would have had to do was go to Jon.
He had never made mention of such a thing - likely because it had never occurred to him - but the scenario had run through her mind more than once. It would have been easy for him to claim fatherhood for any child of hers, offer protection for both her and her baby, and in turn gain an heir easily legitimized by necessity. In theory they could have maintained their relationship as it was, purely platonic, with mutual needs met. He might aggravate her to no end half the time, but he was fiercely loving and staunchly loyal, and would have given his all to be the best father he could. She would have been able to make such a situation work. Had she been anyone other than who she was.
But there would be no children for her.
From the moment she was old enough to put the pieces together in her mind, Visaera had made the promise to herself that she would never bring a child into a world that would do little other than punish them for it. She refused to replicate her own fate.
So far she had been fortunate. She was careful, and kept a ready supply of moon tea on hand - along with a few harsher remedies should they be required. Thus far such recourse had never been necessary, for which she was grateful. Forcibly ridding one's body of a pregnancy could cause a great amount of damage in addition to the distress that such an act would almost certainly bring, but it was a step she was resolved to taking if she had to.
She would throw herself to the sea and the Stranger's mercy before she let the thrice-damned blood in her veins and the legacy it carried endure beyond the reach of her own life.
Jon was right about one thing, though he hadn't necessarily intended it that way. Any lord she married, however highborn, would expect children from her, and refusal on her part was not likely to be swallowed easily. And if she could not avoid marriage as she had intended to…
But that was a problem for another day.
Leaning, she stretched out a hand, crooking her fingers in demand for him to offer up his own hand, which he did instantly - recognizing the familiar gesture on a level bordered on instinctive. Thick fingers curled around hers, broad hand nearly engulfing her far smaller one.
"I love you for offering," she told him quietly, squeezing his hand. "But it's not a viable solution."
He sighed, gazing absently down at her hand. "I suppose not. Still, it was an idea."
"An astoundingly stupid one, true to form."
That brought him a laugh - full and deep, extracting his hand from hers in order to clutch at his chest for the force of it. His humor was infectious, and in short order she caught herself laughing along with him.
"I never did claim to be clever," he retorted after catching his breath back with a wheeze. "If only they'd just caved to tradition and wed you to Prince Rhaegar."
"Well, it certainly would have solved a number of my problems," she admitted, for all that the thought still appealed to her no more than it ever had.
Jon's brows lowered, his lighthearted expression clouding dark.
"A good deal of his, too," he muttered sharply, "being saddled with a sand-eater for one."
She stared at him for a moment, taken aback by the words as much as by the sheer amount of venom in them.
She recognized the slur - a backhanded insult for someone of Dornish heritage, insinuating a general lowness and borderline savagery. What she did not recognize was what it was doing in her foster brother's mouth.
Except…that wasn't entirely true, was it?
She had very vivid memories of Rhaegar's visit to Griffin's Roost those years back, including the evening during which Jon had accompanied the prince up to the tallest tower of the keep, upon request. Jon had been different when he'd come back down: quiet and thoughtful, unfocused, she remembered thinking. His mood had been odd for weeks following the visit, and knowing what she had about him, had put it down to the same affliction she had for half the young women of the Roost. She hadn't imagined him lovesick then, not truly, as such a word possessed a lasting, enduring connotation she wouldn't have attributed to a passing fancy. But now…
Shrewdly she took in the look on his face, the hints of a hurt left to fester behind the grim disapproval. A gentle, sympathetic ache plucked at her heartstrings. But whether she understood or not, she was not about to let such a comment slide.
She had only seen one or two Dornish folk before coming to the capitol, but even then she had never understood why some proper Westerosi (as they called themselves) people regarded them as somehow lower class. She understood it even less now, having spent time in close company with two truly lovely Dornishwomen who she liked far more than she liked the other women of the court, and a Dornishman against which any high lord of the crownlands would have been sorely defeated in a contest of honor or decency.
How anyone could spend an hour in the presence of Ser Dayne and still think less of people from the southron kingdom she could not begin to fathom.
At the bittersweet pang below her ribs, she hurriedly directed her thoughts back to the man she shouldn't be keeping there to one in front of her.
"That was a sad attempt at prejudice," she chided softly. "How about you tell me what's really sticking in your craw?"
Jon's eyes flicked to her, half-startled, and quickly fell away, as though he had forgotten to whom he was speaking, and had abruptly remembered. Likely with a sickening bit of a jolt. "I…it doesn't matter."
Brushing casually at an imaginary thread clinging to her skirt, she let the non-answer sit and grow stale, before speaking again.
"And you don't wear jealousy well."
His immediate reflex was a flinch, followed by a humorless sliver of a smile. "Am I truly so easy to read?"
"For me, yes." Regarding him steadily, she continued: "The Dornish are a powerful people, as history has taught us more than once—"
Eyes tightly closed, Jon gave a flustered wave of a hand. "Yes, I know."
"—and if things keep going the way they do, our Prince will greatly need their support, which will come more easily for his ties to their royal house through Princess Elia..."
This time when Jon's hand lifted it was in somber placation.
"Yes…I know."He raked both hands back through his hair, jostling the wild curls. His exhale heavy, resigned. "Forgive me, had no place in my head, let alone my mouth. I just…"
While he didn't crumple completely, there was a tight clenching in his face that she well recognized now after many turbulent adolescent years. Lowering her feet to the floor, she went to him. At her touch to his shoulder his arms automatically lifted to circle her waist and he leaned into her, resting his head against her ribs as she stroked a hand softly up and down his back.
"I know, dearest. I'm sorry."
Her heart hurt for him - in love with a man out of his reach in almost every way possible. If the circumstances held a touch of irony, she pretended otherwise.
He allowed himself the comforting for the length of a good few heartbeats before drawing back. His eyes were slightly overbright, but clear enough as he lifted his head to look at her. "It doesn't matter," he assured her. "I have everything I need."
"It would be nice to have what you want, too," she said.
"Maybe someday." His hands pressed lightly at her waist. "But it's not important right now. I'm not the one whose entire life is being stolen out from under me."
"Are you certain? Because for a moment there—"
Jon's eyes rolled once again toward the ceiling, and he shoved her affectionately backwards toward her own chair with an exasperated mutter of: "gods' balls."
She snickered, falling back into her chair with an artless lack of grace. "I've survived worse than this. Now talk about something else you great sorry ox."
He snorted, every inch annoyed but for the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"Fine, then. Insufferable harpy. Let me see…" Drumming his fingers against the scrolling wood of the chair frame, he thought. Then, suddenly his eyes brightened. "Ah! I just heard this morning that there's to be a joust three days from today, and that rumor is we'll be seeing not one but two legendary knights in the lists!"
His boyish excitement was delightful, and not even the faint prickle of dread could keep the smile from her mouth.
"I'm meant to be spending the day with Lord Yarwyck—" she began, only for Jon to cut her swiftly off.
"Piss on Harmon Yarwyck," he declared, "you're spending it with me. I claim brotherly privilege to rescue you, at least until dinner."
She fluttered her lashes at him. "My hero."
He shot her a grimace. "Oh dear. Saera, don't be alarmed…but I do believe you've caught some manner of palsy. Your eyes are doing the queerest thing—"
She cackled, bent to seize one of her slippers, and chucked it at his head.
Jon, the wily shite, dodged.
...
With a quiet rustle of parchment Rhaegar flipped through his list of notes, counting as he went. A frown was pulling at his carven mouth and between his fair brows, the lilac of his eyes gone stormy with uncertainty.
"Of all the names we've gone through," the prince murmured, "we're still only barely on the better side of half, and that's counting the maybes and some of the likely-nots."
Watching Rhaegar's shoulders hunch, Arthur felt a pang of sympathy for his friend. Being much older than his years in many ways, it was difficult to remember sometimes that Rhaegar was still on the earlier end of his twenties - not all that young in the grander scheme of things, but young enough that it occasionally showed.
"You've yet to make it even halfway through the book," Arthur reminded him gently, to which Rhaegar responded with a distracted nod.
"I know. I simply—I didn't anticipate so many of those I expected to be surer bets to turn out otherwise."
The statement was mainly frustration, but contained a melancholic slant that Arthur recognized as heralding one of Rhaegar's lingering, dour moods.
"There've been some that have shifted the opposite way as well," he pointed out. "Don't discount that simply because it's not precisely what you hoped."
"It's not that."
Setting the papers aside, the prince sat back in his chair, scrubbing an elegant hand across his face.
"The lords haven't been this divided since the civil war. I'm starting to grow concerned that all I may end up accomplishing with this is starting another, and what the cost might be this time."
The allusion of similarities between the current state of the kingdom and the brutal civil war of a century past known in the history books as the Dance of the Dragons was not an overstatement. Historians would likely someday look back on the past five years and point to the moment where events had fallen into the tracks previously laid by prior Targaryen kings and queens vying for power and destroying one another - and many others besides - in the process.
But that was one of the follies of history. In order to truly learn from it enough to prevent the past from becoming present anew, one must possess an impossible understanding of all the potential variables which might cause such a repetition. The canvas of time might be heavily marked with the same patterns over and over again, but each time with different stitches in different shades. From a distance the sameness might be obvious to the point where mistaking it seemed improbable. When immersed up close, grand encompassing patterns no longer stood out anywhere but in hindsight.
Arthur paused to consider his words, knowing what he was about to say might not be something his prince wanted to hear. He wouldn't keep silent - there had been more than one conversation in the past involving Rhaegar's pleas that Arthur always speak if he felt it necessary - but he understood the value in handling such things gently.
"It may be that war is inevitable."
The crease of Rhaegar's frown deepened as he glanced toward the other man. "Do you truly believe that?"
"What I believe is of little consequence," Arthur answered, folding his hands over the clasp of his sword belt. "It's been evident for quite some time that we're approaching a crossroads and that choices must be made. You might have the option not to act, and it may be that the cost is less lives lost immediately. It may also mean much worse in the years to come. No matter what you do, there will be a price. The real question is which choice will allow you to shape the form and severity of that price, and which can you live with least?"
"It's not about what I…"
The statement drifted off into silence before it could fully form, Rhaegar's eyes sliding into the unfocused, faraway distance of deep thought.
The firstborn prince had always been a dreamer. Deep thought came more naturally to him than did almost anything else, but lately he had been slipping into unusual moments of extreme preoccupation, sometimes in the midst of conversation, or even mid-sentence, such as now. Arthur had been inclined to assume these instances were related to the monumental strain of the burden he bore - heavy enough to turn even the most steady mind pensive and uncertain. In that exact instant, however, he experienced the sudden sense that something else was weighing on Rhaegar's mind. Something related to the matter, and yet…distinctly separate, all at once.
Before he had the time to consider whether it was more helpful to broach the topic or let it lie, the prince's eyes cleared and he gave a thin smile.
"You don't think I'm making a horrendous mistake, then."
Arthur returned the smile with an encouraging one of his own. "Neither I nor Lady Visaera would remain silent if we thought that the case."
Rhaegar nodded, seemingly reassured. "And I am indescribably grateful to you both."
In this particular matter, Visaera was of far more value than he, but Arthur kept that thought to himself.
Alongside his concern in regard to her whereabouts.
The fact that they had expected her half an hour ago was not in itself cause for worry. It was rather earlier in the day than any of her previous meetings with Rhaegar had been, and if she was struggling to get adequate rest it was not difficult to imagine what might be keeping her. Not that this kept the entirety of his concern at bay. Not when he had never noticed her to be late for anything before.
A hollow knock sounded upon the door and Arthur moved to open it, admitting a boy from the kitchens, bearing a tray of food, cups, and a pitcher of cider.
The boy was just crossing over the threshold when the delicate, purposeful tap of heeled slippers sounded upon the stone outside. Arthur turned back to the corridor to find Lady Visaera approaching at a hurried walk, stifling a yawn behind her hand.
There was an endearingly ruffled edge to her appearance: the laces down the front of her bodice tied in obvious haste and the braided coil used to tame her hair was somewhat rumpled, as though she had styled it the night before and fallen asleep with it pinned. It leant her an air of having tumbled straight out of bed, which she very well might have if the wideness of that yawn was any indication.
Something in him softened at that, yet he did not allow himself to linger on the thought. He simply laid his palm to the surface of the door and pressed it wider to allow her entry.
Her eyes lifted. Her steps slowing and her eyes going just the faintest bit wide at the sight of him. Almost immediately her gaze dropped, as though to look at him for too long was tantamount to some great betrayal, and the softness in his chest constricted into sudden anguish.
Was she ashamed? He truly hoped that wasn't the case.
She had no reason to feel shame. Not for the indiscretion, nor for the mistaken belief that she had done him some manner of offense when she had not. She had been shaken and recovering, on top of every other burden she bore day after trying day. It was not her fault she had responded the way she had to his attempts to offer comfort. The blame was his for having offered it in the first place when he had known that he shouldn't - had known, on some level, what a colossal mistake it would be to blur the lines between them. Yet still, even now, even when he knew that nothing but pain could come of it, he couldn't bring himself to regret doing it.
How could he regret staying to wake her when she had been trapped in the jaws of her own mind? Or sitting with her when she had so clearly needed some sort of soothing presence? How could he regret kissing her? Regret the warmth of her breath or the yielding softness of her with the sweetness of the memory still within such easy grasp…
He had been resolved to put it behind him - the incident and all the subsequent emotion left in the wake of it. He had no other choice. Yet all it had taken was that one indecipherable look from her to test the willpower he had always considered to be rather steady. Just one look and he found himself wrestling with the compulsion to absolve her of whatever worry she carried so needlessly. Yet there was no way for him to do so. He could not undo what was done, and he could not speak for risk of making real what could not be.
All he could do was remain passive and feign a detachment he did not feel.
At that moment she lifted her head, subtly straightening. Her smile was slight, weighed down by obvious weariness, but it was polite, and he read the message in it as clear as day.
Nothing happened. Nothing has changed.
She was as committed to carrying on as though the events of that night had been no more than the work of an overactive imagination, just as he was. It was at once a relief and a source of stabbing anguish.
"Good morning, Ser Arthur," she greeted, her voice husky and sleep-soaked, dragging down the length of his back like cool fingertips.
"My Lady, " he inclined his head to her.
She slipped past him, the hem of her skirts brushing his ankle and a hint of rose - musky and sweet - which he understood now to be her perfume, caught upon his inhale.
He took shameless advantage of the kitchen boy's retreat out into the corridor as an excuse to turn away and compose himself. Nudging the distraction gently aside, he pressed the door securely closed and resumed his post by the door, reasonably recentered and alert.
"Good morning indeed, cousin. Barely…" Rhaegar teased as Visaera approached the desk.
"Yes, all right," she groused as she dragged a chair from the window over and settled into it. "My apologies. I was up much too late, and I completely slept through Lerise's first, more subtle attempts to wake me."
Up late, Arthur wondered with a flicker of concern, or couldn't sleep?
Rhegar's smile shifted from playful to warm. "How is Jon?"
Visaera brightened at the question, putting to rest any concern Arthur might have had that the lack of sleep was due to more consuming nightmares.
"Apparently Robert decided he didn't want to make the trip here in prime panther season, so he sent Jon and Ezra Mertyns in his place," she explained. "Jon is thrilled. The last letter he sent me from Storm's End was...indicative that an escape would be welcome."
"I'm sure he's glad for the opportunity to see you as well," the prince added, reaching for the pitcher of cider and filling both cups, setting one in front of her.
"I suppose so, yes."
There was an odd edge to Visaera's smile that didn't quite match the almost dismissive tone of her answer, at once fond and wistful.
Casting his mind back, Arthur recalled the enthusiasm with which she had met the young griffin lord in the stableyard. The pet names (ribald and otherwise), open affection, and other marks of a significant closeness between them. He had assumed that closeness to be comparable to that of siblings - of friendship and kinship. But they weren't blood kin, nor had they been as small as many children often were when fostered together. It wasn't impossible to imagine that something more had developed between the two of them as they had grown up together.
In truth, he was almost shocked that the thought hadn't occurred to him before, especially in light of his prior wondering as to whether she had left a paramour back in the Stormlands. The way she had all but flung herself into Connington's arms…perhaps it hadn't been merely talk which had kept her awake into the late hours.
He didn't want to believe this was the case. Rather, his ego didn't, not after she had allowed him to kiss her only two nights back. But he was forced to concede that it was possible. In loneliness and fear it was possible that she had allowed what she might otherwise have not; that she had touched his cheek the way she might that of someone dear, curled her fingers into his hair as if imploring him down to her mouth.
He should accept it as exactly that - a moment of weakness borne out of heartache for another man. It would be easier that way. No more pleasant, but easier by far. He could dismiss nearly any action made from such a place far more easily than he could dismiss the prospect of her sharing even a fraction of the regard he held for her.
Which was why he would accept this story in his head and consider the matter past and done.
Cradling the cup of steaming liquid between her hands, Visaera smothered another tiny yawn.
"Apologies," she begged again when Rhaegar chuckled. "We'd better get to it before we run out of time."
"Right…"
Long white fingers curling around the corners of the pages, Rhaegar flipped through the book of noble families to the page marked. Picking up his quill, he read out the next name.
"Karstark."
Visaera hummed into her cider as she took a sip. "Mmm. Lord Karstark has little love for anyone farther south than the God's Eye," she noted in dry contemplation. "But if you have Lord Stark, you'll have Karstark."
A nod, indicating the statement one Rhaegar agreed with. Quill dipped into ink, a note was made,
Quickly they fell into the now familiar pattern: the two pale-haired Targaryens sorting through name after name, debating loyalties and possible ways to persuade or to bribe the respective noble lords of Westeros, Arthur's attention divided evenly between listening in order to assist when called for and listening through the door to any encroaching noise from the hallway without.
Likely not having (or not taking) the time to eat before rushing straight there, Visaera ended up reaching for the food much sooner than she normally did, fussing with the tray of leftover rolls and cuts of meat and cheese.
"Keith," Rhaegar read, nodding thanks as she slid him a cloth napkin with the roll she had just stuffed with soft yellow cheese and cold chicken.
Reaching for another roll, she tilted her head, squinting slightly in thought. "Keith is…sworn to House Tully, yes?"
The prince nodded as he chewed.
"I don't know them, but if they're anything like the Tullys—which I'll assume they are, considering how tightly knit the lords of the Riverlands are—then they have strong moral objections to the way your father rules. You'll have to prove how different a king you'll be."
"That's doable."
Visaera nodded absently in the midst of pulling the second roll partway open to create a pocket and slipping in a thick slice of ham.
Rhaegar made a note in reference to House Keith's potential scruples, and took another bite of roll. "Kenning," he read, turning to the next page. "Hm…another Lannister vassel—"
"Kayce is located less than an hour's ride from the Westerland coastline," Visaera noted softly. "They're often victims of raiding from the Iron Islands."
There was something in her voice, Arthur thought, and in the sudden cool stillness beneath her casual movements as she placed the second roll onto a napkin and retrieved a crumb of cheese from where it had fallen to the desk. The notes of experience, and a hint of steel.
He hadn't imagined any specific scenario in which she had been forced to spill blood, only that she'd had to at least once. From that single statement he knew without any doubt that she had seen battle.
Real battle.
It explained more than it didn't. Her physical strength for one, the way she absorbed his hit so calmly. Even the way she had held her sword - the tendency to switch between a two-handed grip and a right-handed one, the very slight compensatory increase in attention every time she opened up her left side. He would have bet every stitch of his ceremonial armor that she was accustomed to carrying a shield at that side.
"If you can offer Lady Kenning more protection against such raids, or insurance of assistance in the event of them, she'll go against Lannister to back you."
Rhaegar's pale brows lifted.
"Trust me," she said, her face set and certain. "Casterly Rock isn't giving her enough support out of presumption and her people are paying for it."
Another touch of steel, this time sharp. Far too sharp to simply be scorn toward the great arrogance of the Lannisters. Certainly she was scornful of them, but that wasn't the sole source of her ire, which was to be expected of a woman who had spent her life in large, wealthy cities along the coastline and had likely experienced her share of raids.
There had been reports of an attempted assault on Griffin's Roost by several ships from the Iron Islands a few years ago. Connington soldiers had managed to hold a significant half of their forces off at the cliffs, rendering the potential spoils too low and the cost of life too high for the Ironborn to justify and forcing them to retreat. If Arthur had to wager, he would have put his money on his sudden certainty that Visaera knew precisely what kind of support it would take a lesser house such as Kenning to face down an onslaught with such force behind it. From his answering nod, Rhaegar would have wagered the same.
Onward they slogged, name after name; house after house weighed against their history, motivations, needs, and ambitions.
House Knott, a mountain clan of the North - isolationists and happy that way. House Leygood of the Reach - disliked conflict as a rule but might be convinced toward a firmer stance with the right political motivation. House Lorch, landed knights of the Westerlands - a history of untrustworthiness across multiple generations. House Lychester of the Riverlands - fierce and fiercely loyal to those who earned their allegiance. House Lynderly, Lords of the Snakewood in the Vale…
"We'd have them for sure if I married Royce," was Visaera's judgment of this last house, "they covet the influence, do the Snakewood lords."
There was very little to indicate it, no sharpness or accompanying expression, so it was unclear to Arthur why the statement stuck him the way it did - as defensive rather than the light jest she had intended it to be. Reminiscent of the faintest warning hiss of a cat pinned and cornered.
A shallow frown formed between Rhaegar's brows, and if Arthur knew his friend at all he recognized the hint of disapproval. Rhaegar had not been all that vocal about the matter of his cousin's situation. The prince was far more comfortable with the concept of arranged marriage, but Arthur knew that he found the handling of Visaera's particular situation to be in poor taste. He also knew that of the proposed suitors, Rhaegar favored Royce for a number of reasons. The foremost of which being that the position would offer her more protection than the others, which was also the primary reason he suspected the match would not be sanctioned in the end. Both sentiments with which Arthur agreed, though he wished it were not the case.
Rhaegar, contrary to the litany of words behind his expression, smoothed it away and offered merely: "we'll assume they will follow the Arryns, then."
The soft rise and fall of voices - muffled by the door - caught Arthur's ear and he angled his head toward it, discerning the underlying rhythm of approaching footsteps.
There was a brisk knock.
"Your Grace—"
He recognized Richard Lonmouth's voice by the reedy crack - not quite finished with the transition from that of a boy to a man.
Gathering up his notes, Rhaegar folded them into a drawer and capped the ink. Visaera unfolded the wrap from her shoulders and promptly tossed it across the desk, neatly concealing the book and writing implements beneath as though she had merely grown warm and dropped it there in the midst of conversation.
At Rhaegar's nod, Arthur reached for the handle and pulled the door open to reveal the squire, a skinny lad of fifteen.
"Begging your pardon, Your Grace, I—oh, and yours, of course, My Lady."
Richard's eyes widened, his ears going nearly as red as his livery, clearly horrified that he had just inadvertently issued some manner of insult to the king's cousin.
Visaera merely gave him a kind smile over the rim of her cup.
"I, er—" the boy's flush deepened and he looked intently back at Rhaegar, "you asked me to fetch you at a quarter to noon…for the hunt?"
Rhaegar nodded. "I did. Thank you, Richard."
Resting his palms upon the desk, the prince rose, which Visaera echoed in proper deference to his status in front of an observer.
"We'll have to continue this later," he said to her, face smooth, composed, and faintly distant. "As I can hardly not attend a hunt being given in my own honor, even when I am indifferent about them. Please continue to monitor the Princess' health for me. I'm worried about the toll all the activity is having on her."
"Of course, My Prince," Visaera agreed, perfectly demure, and curtseyed prettily as Rhaegar moved around the desk and beckoned to his squire.
Still red as a late-summer apple, Richard scurried after his prince and knight master through the door leading from the solar into Rhaegar's dressing room.
Arthur followed, crossing the floor with the quiet clink of scale links to steel.
"Will you be with him?"
He paused near the desk when her voice reached him, the question pitched low and quiet.
She wasn't looking at him, but lifting her wrap from the desk - carefully so as not to upset the ink blue flower pattern amid the gray and bronze weave of the heavy cloth was a near to perfect match to her dress, and quite becoming against the white skin of her shoulders where they disappeared beneath her neckline.
"I will, yes," he offered in answer.
She nodded once, eyes flickering momentarily closed, as if in reflexive relief. "Thank you," she murmured, heavy with sincerity. "I don't like the thought of him out there as it is…"
She didn't finish the statement, but she hardly needed to. He could see the concern clouded dark, pulling at the corners of her mouth.
Hunting was not as dangerous a sport as many, certainly not compared to the kind to follow later in the week. Still, accidents were plentiful enough, either from beasts or from errant weapons or fall from a horse…though this wasn't the manner of accident she feared, as he well understood.
In the thick of the disorganized activity of a hunt, it would be very easy for some coincidental harm to befall a royal who just happened to be in attendance.
He shouldn't touch her - that had been made more than plain. Every time he had before had gone too, strayed too widely from boundaries he was honor-bound not to breach. Yet she looked so very worried, very near to gray with it, that he did not check the impulse to lift his hand to the bend of her arm. The side of his index finger grazed the space just below her elbow, then the tip of his thumb. The faintest hint of contact which could be disguised as a simple request for her attention.
"I will keep him safe, My Lady. I swear it."
Her eyes snapped down to the touch, then up to meet his gaze with a shock of brilliant blue. Awareness chased down his spine, softer and warmer than any chill.
He was vividly reminded of the way she had turned to him that night, still in the grip of her nightmare; those same eyes glazed and unfocused until they lit upon his face. The soft, informal whisper of his name on her lips. In the moment it was the recognition he had heard, the faint confusion as to his presence. But now, looking back, he heard the relief. Not only for there having been someone to wake her, not even that it had been someone she deemed safe or trustworthy, but that it had been him.
Arthur.
He tried not to think it - truly, he did. Yet he couldn't quite manage to banish the realization: the sudden understanding that when she had laid her hand against his cheek, curled her fingers in his hair, it had most certainly much been an emotional response to something…but it had not been the longing for someone else.
She had wanted him there, and unlike the fleeting glance in the training yard, he had not been able to dismiss it as a conjuring of his imagination. On a deeply instinctive level he had recognized it for exactly what it was. Just as he recognized the trust in her eyes as she looked at him now, as the worry tight in her posture and her face eased beneath nothing more than his verbal reassurance and the barest brush of his fingertips.
"I know you will," she murmured then, and the certainty in her voice - the stark, unwavering belief in the eyes of the selfsame woman that had once so boldly declared her doubts as to his loyalty to her prince - might as well have knocked his knees out from beneath him.
And then, soft as the first touch of the sun's rays at the very break of day, she smiled at him.
It was a small thing, so slight that had he not been looking straight at her he might have missed it, and he nearly wished he had. For if he had not glimpsed the tender, plaintive yearning in that tiny smile it might have been possible for him to believe that he stood any semblance of a chance of ignoring the pull he felt toward her - deep and persistent and fierce.
There was good reason to force those who would guard a king to forego love. He understood the why of it now. What man would not give all that he was for but a sliver more once tasted?
It would have been so easy to let his hand slip down the line of her forearm, following the seam of her sleeve to the lacing at her wrist, so easy to fold her hand in his own, carry it to his mouth and press his lips to the graceful bend of her knuckles the way every mad, impulsive part of him desperately wished to. So very easy.
He let his hand fall back to his side.
Lowering her eyes, Visaera unfolded the cloth she held, wrapping it close about her shoulders. She bid him a quiet: "good day, then," and started toward the door with a muted sigh of skirts.
Very deliberately Arthur did he turn his head to watch her go. Instead, he moved to follow his prince, and duty.
NOTES:
This chapter is rather more boring than the ones previous - apologies for that. I was originally going to include another scene, but I think it's going to run a bit long so I'm cutting it here. I'll confess, I'm not thrilled about the second scene. It gave me a bit of trouble near the end, which was mostly me getting in my own way, but it does feel necessary to have it. Hopefully the next chapter will go and be smoother.
It is canon that Jon is gay, and it is canon that he's in love with Rhaegar - which honestly is tragic and sweet and so very fitting for this story that it's almost ridiculous. Also canon that he wasn't a fan of Elia, unfortunately. I don't actually know this (haven't read the books), but I don't think it's canon that anyone calls him 'Griff' until GoT era when he's concealing his identity. I'm taking a liberty because the idea is cute to me.
If I could hashtag each chapter, I would add #rhaegarbeingrhaegar to this one. Whatever that means is anyone's guess, in canon and here (which is how I want it).
Also #pining.
That's honestly the extent of my notes for this chapter...going to try and get back to cracking on the next one. Please wish me luck and speed, and the inspiration to do so! Thank you 3
Until next time!