A/N: thank you for sticking with me 3
Gods be good, Dyana thought with a gentle sigh. The next morning, it was Miranda who knocked at her door in the early hours, not Robert, and the change of routine was great relief. Dyana wasn't sure what she would do if she had to face him after the night before.
The flamewine might have removed the taste of his kiss, but she still couldn't shake the unsettling memory of how he had so flagrantly imposed upon her boundaries.
Thoughts of what came after that in the dark library were too dangerous to touch.
Miranda, though frowning, was sight for sore eyes. She held aloft the customary tea offering somewhat sarcastically. "I was told by the steward I'm your new runner girl now, it seems," she griped. The words were sharp, but her eyes sparkled with pale humor. Dyana knew that her friend had a tendency toward dramatic hyperbole; the steward would have never demoted Miranda in such a fashion and the absurdity of the notion made her grin.
Dyana pulled her inside. Behind them, Malla was turning back into her bedding to reclaim the sleep Miranda's banging knock had interrupted. "Jolly good," Dyana laughed with an eyeroll. "I've seen much too many men these past few days. Begone with Robert, I say." She would tell Miranda about what happened another time, but for now, she was content to hold the secret close to her chest.
Miranda set about pouring three cups. "So," she began as she handed Dyana her portion of tea. "You must tell me if the rumors are true—did Prince Aemond escort you back to your room last night?"
Dyana nearly did a spit take. Sputtering and struggling to swallow, she discarded her tea and gaped at her friend with the beginnings of a caught flush spreading across her cheeks. "How do you know that?" she asked in a sharp whisper. When Dyana looked over at Malla she was relieved to see the younger girl asleep; it wouldn't do to have her privy to her chambermate's true wanderings from the night prior.
The thought of the prince wracked her spine with a terrible shiver.
"Ah-ha!" Miranda exclaimed. Dyana rushed to shush her, but she persisted. Miranda scooted forward on her stool until her knees were pressed painfully close against Dyana's, face tipping forward for whispers almost too intimately for comfort. "So it's true! I never would have thought you to have it in you, Dy—what was it like?"
Dyana leaned back and shook her head, loose strands from her sloppy braid shaking loose to move with her furious denial. "No, you've got it wrong! I didn't do anything with him, gods no! He caught me in the library and escorted me back to the courtyard, that's all."
Miranda snorted. "Oh, come on. You know as well as I that Cook told us we have permission to be there after nightfall. Why would he be catching you in the castle you call home?"
Dyana pressed her palms tight to her eyes and dragged them down. Her light hangover, though tolerable, was still pounding a thorough staccato and it was getting worse with each of Miranda's teasings. "You know why. I went there for the bottle at the back and I couldn't let him see me with it. I must have been flustered enough for him to think I was up to something instead of just looking for a book."
Miranda snickered into her tea. "Poor Dyana. Can't even have a nighttime tryst with a prince properly," she wheedled.
Dyana lashed out and snapped, "Is that what you said to Laera when she limped back from Aegon's rooms after he forced himself on her?"
As soon as Miranda registered the harsh words she snapped to her feet and banged her tea down on the low table. Dyana regretted her words instantly; whatever petty pleasure she had felt at showing Miranda the edge of her anger dissipated like smoke when she saw the tight jut of her friend's jaw and burning eyes. "That was low, even for you," Miranda hissed. "I hope no one will invoke your name in such a way when you're ousted from the Keep for being One-Eye's slut."
Dyana sighed. It was early and the tea was nearly cold—she didn't have the energy to fight. Miranda's angry outbursts were frequent and unprompted enough that Dyana knew not to take them seriously. "You're right, Miranda, and I'm sorry. I think I'm just tired. Sit back down and forgive me…I have a present to give you, anyhow."
Miranda kept to her feet and crossed her arms. "Do you think I can be eased back to sweetness with small treats?"
Dyana smiled at the tease. "Yes, I do. C'mon, it's pretty and you'll like it." While Miranda impatiently tapped her foot, Dyana moved back to her cot to paw at the small pile of belongings halfway tucked under it. The small metal rose pin she had bought for Miranda was tucked in a length of cloth somewhere; she moved aside a stack of parchment and nudged away at her new dragonfly slippers to find it.
Behind her, Miranda gasped and stepped forward. "You didn't," she asked with a breathy gush. "They're gorgeous!"
Dyana frowned over her shoulder. The sight of Miranda with her hands clasped charmingly in front of her breast and cheeks pink was welcome, but she hadn't even found the pin yet. Cursing her lack of neatness, she asked, "What?"
"The slippers! Oh, dragonflies are Princess Helaena's favorite. Apt given their name, eh? I can't wait to wear them to breakfast service and show her." Before Dyana could grasp what her friend meant, Miranda had stooped down and scooped her new embroidered slippers right into her hands. "They're perfect. You're absolutely forgiven, Dy. May all of your sleeps be sweet and may the prince have you roaring each night just like his dragon when he rides you. I love them."
Dyana sat back on her heels and wiped a nervous hand at the back of her neck. "Miranda, those aren't your gift. I bought those for myself…my old ones were getting worn…"
Miranda froze, her fingers claw-like on the slippers. A dark flush stained her cheeks. "What?"
Dyana managed to spy the rose pin and hurried to grab it. She rolled back to her feet, mindful of her nightgown, and held out the pin with an embarrassed reach. "This is the gift I got you…your favorite flower."
Miranda accepted the pin numbly and dropped the dragonfly slippers back into Dyana's now empty palms. "Oh. It's lovely," she said politely. There was strain in her voice, but Dyana chose to shake off the feeling of unease at her friend's lack of gratefulness.
Dyana tucked the slippers back under the lip of her cot, out of sight, and said, "I'm sure the princess will find the pin just as lovely." A strange affirmation—but something on Miranda's face urged Dyana to give it all the same.
Miranda turned the pin in her hands, watching how the low candlelight from Malla's pricket dish reflected off the pewter surface. The pin wasn't particularly intricate or grand, but it was pretty, something unobtrusive and practical enough that Miranda could use to pin her scarves. Something small, an apology, a peace offering.
Strange how Miranda had taken so strongly to the slippers; she had never been fond of insects before, always more charmed by flowers and gardens than by anything with the ability to fly or crawl.
The curious unease between the two young women didn't dissipate. The pair returned to their tea soon after, and when Miranda left for the steward's solar to get their orders for the day, Dyana couldn't shake the feeling that there was something important about the small interaction that she had missed.
The insinuations Miranda had made about Dyana's status to the One-Eyed prince, Dyana decided, were too ridiculous to even address directly.
A handful of weeks passed gently and the weather grew cooler.
Dyana's new routine had become stoneset before she realized it; Miranda would wake her with a pot of tea, they would get their marching orders directly from the steward, and then they'd journey down into the kitchen to break fast and grab trays. Breakfast service was laid in the Holdfast—the Targaryen siblings showing up to eat most times, and usually quietly—and then there would be a reprieve before lunch. Dyana split her breaks between helping the other kitchen girls scrub at the dirty pots and wandering the Keep's gardens alone. Dinner service for the royals was a spotty affair, and more often than not, several seats at the table would be empty of bodies. It was a relief that the princes were rarely present; Aegon hadn't been spied at a family meal for quite some time now, but Miranda had assured her that he took his dinner in his private chamber alone far after dark when she would go fill the wine flagons in his quarters.
Dyana avoided the library.
Robert had granted her a curious amount of distance, not that Dyana minded. The kiss in the tunnel wasn't forgotten, and they still exchanged pleasantries when their paths would cross, but the polite length at which they regarded one another was foreign given their history of friendship.
Miranda had weighed in on the matter after Dyana told her what happened. She took care not to disclose the bit about the secret tunnel; Robert had shared its existence in secret, and as peeved as she was at his behavior, she had no want to betray his confidence. "Personally, I think you should have taken the chance and had him right there," her friend had informed her breezily one morning with an impish smile. They had been in the steward's solar adjusting their outer dresses before breakfast and Dyana had laughed. "No, really!" Miranda pressed. "Isn't he handsome? He takes care of you, too, always has. He's of a Minor House, has a nice smile, and he brought you tea each morning for nearly twenty moon-turns. I'm almost surprised you didn't go for it."
Dyana had tucked her length of braid under her bonnet and tried to dispel the uncomfortable tightening in her belly. In those early days the whole situation still smarted like a stinging firebrand. "All I could think about when he kissed me was Laera. If Robert wanted to court me, he wouldn't have made a move in the dark like he did. He'd bring me flowers in the kitchen, or maybe escort me by hand through the gardens…"
Miranda had laughed, but not meanly. "Such a little lady, aren't you?" she teased, hands planted on her hips. She looked over her shoulder at the door to verify they were still alone and said, "You don't have to have a future with a man to enjoy his company."
Dyana rolled her eyes. "What was it you accused me of being the night I was caught? Prince Aemond's slut? I'd imagine you'd have me be the same for Robert then. I can assure you I have no interest in either."
"No interest…well if not with a man, what about with a woman? So many pretty girls down in the kitchens…I'm sure you could find one who'd happily warm your bed."
Miranda's words shocked her. "A woman? Two women can't lay together, Miranda. That's absurd."
Miranda wiggled her eyebrows and poked out her tongue from between her teeth. "Sure they can! It's fun, too…women know their bodies so much better than men. Softer, kinder, sweet…"
Dyana snorted. "If you keep talking like that I may have to reach up your skirts to see if you're sporting a cock. You'd do well on a stage, talking like that—I'm sure there's a mummer's troupe somewhere that would be thrilled to have such an actress. You can't be serious."
Miranda didn't laugh at that, only dropped her hands from her hips and turned away. Dyana didn't think anything of it; her friend was mercurial and had a tendency for crude humor, so the remark was easy to brush off.
Other remarks, said by other people, were harder to let go.
It seemed like the whole of the servant class in the Red Keep had heard about Dyana's little encounter with Prince Aemond after dark; some people, like the young runner boys, simply stared at her with wide eyes when she'd pass with her tower of trays, hurrying to whisper behind their hands to their peers when she'd pass. The kitchen girls—particularly Vira, Sankita, and Lysonne—had all asked her about it too. Those were the encounters that were easiest to deal with; the boys were lower in the servant class hierarchy than she, so they wouldn't dare speak truly out of turn. The kitchen girls largely knew and believed her and had enough grace to drop the matter when asked.
Other comments, like from Cook, felt like a slap.
"Are you mad, girl?" Cook had asked her furiously after pulling her aside the morning after the rumors made their final rounds. "Dallying about after dark with the prince? I would have thought so much better of you Dyana. Did you learn nothing from what happened to Laera, or do you think yourself so special as to keep this a secret?"
"You've heard lies," Dyana had responded through gritted teeth. Cook had barely believed her until she'd taken the woman by the shoulders and pulled her toward a window so the weak morning sunlight could bathe across her face. "Look at me. You know me better than anyone—look at my face. Nothing happened between Prince Aemond and I. Do I look like I'm lying?"
Cook had eyed her critically before sighing, shoulders sagging. "No, girl. You aren't. But hear me…you must not give these rumors any more fuel. Already the steward has come knocking to inquire about your status as a serving girl, to ask if it's wise for you to be so close to the Targaryens with what people are saying. What would you have me say to them?"
Dyana's response had been fierce. "I'd have you tell everyone to fuck off. I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize your endorsement of me, you know that."
It was a small mercy that Cook didn't ask any questions after that, but irritatingly, the older woman began passing Dyana small, curious stares that suggested she remained suspicious.
Dyana didn't even want to think about what some of the others had told her. The butcher, some of the guards, the stable hands, a few of the Keep blacksmiths who usually kept to the training yard—their comments were far crueler. It became work for Dyana to school her face and keep her eyes low when she'd pass them.
Prince Aemond, by contrast, simply didn't regard her at all.
It was welcome, she decided, to be so steadfastly ignored; her eyes would still linger on the cut of his jaw as he chewed politely on salted meats or sipped cleanly from his cups, but his eyes never slid to her at all. She became little more than a ghost around him, arms reaching to lay trays and wrists straining as she poured watered wine. She passed him cutlery and their fingers didn't touch. She placed folded napkins by his plate, sometimes even on the side of his eyepatch, and he made no comment. He wouldn't even speak the Common Tongue in her presence, instead speaking in low, curling syllables to his sister Helaena in a language that sounded almost too fluid and pretty to be coming from his cruel mouth. During the infrequent family dinners where he made an appearance, he rarely spoke at all, and if he did, it would be purred directly into his Queen mother's canted ear.
Dyana couldn't say that Helaena offered her the same blessed distance.
The princess was a curious conundrum. Some days she'd be bubbly, even chatty; she'd speak in a confusing mix of Common Tongue and High Valyrian, sometimes abandoning her meal altogether to lecture her younger brother about the phylogenic wonders of the many insects she'd harvest from the gardens. Sometimes she'd bring bugs to the table—much to Miranda's amusement—and trap them under glass bell jars at the small table's center. Aemond always listened politely when Helaena was in one of her good moods, and even rarer they'd discuss their studies of law and history. At least, that's what Dyana assumed they discussed; it was difficult to follow the flow of conversation when only a quarter of it was spoken in a language Dyana could understand.
On these good days, the princess would call her to the table. Miranda was always dismissed when this happened; Dyana could tell it grated on her friend to not be present for what was surely a most indecorous breach of courtly behavior (not to mention interesting gossip fodder). Each time the princess called Dyana to sit beside her the prince would simply leave the table altogether.
He wouldn't leave the solar, instead choosing to abscond to the balcony with a book.
"Your slippers are lovely," the princess had told her lightly one morning. Dyana had only been wearing them for weeks now, but it wasn't a surprise that the princess hadn't noticed immediately. Sitting at the table with a Targaryen still made Dyana horribly nervous, but those nerves paled in comparison to the roaring hellfire of anxiety she felt when Helaena slid from her chair and simply sat, right on the floor, to get a better look at Dyana's shoes.
One of Helaena's pale fingertips lightly caressed the edge of the careful embroidery and she smiled brilliantly up at Dyana. "I recognize this as one of Septa Marsha's patterns. She came to the Keep some seasons past and taught me how to make this very stitching. See the jewels for the eyes? I was the one who suggested she add that detail. Where did you get these? Are you friends with the Septa?"
Dyana had swallowed back her wild misgivings at having the princess kneel at her feet and cast nervous eyes to the gauzy curtains shielding the balcony from view. Please don't look, Dyana mentally begged Aemond. She did not want to know how he would react to such a sight. "No, my princess. I bought these on merchant's row from a cobbler. Perhaps the Septa has monetized her pattern?"
Helaena nodded absently, eyes low and pale eyelashes brushing at her cheeks. She curled one small hand over the curve of Dyana's ankle and turned her foot to get a better look. Dyana had swallowed dryly and allowed it, not sure what to do otherwise. "That's possible," Helaena agreed. "I've always been fond of dragonflies. They can live up to a year and sometimes longer in captivity…I used to keep one in my chamber. They're difficult to catch but you can lure the larvae with other insects if you find a pool of water."
Dyana's breath came faster as Helaena's hand traveled boldly up to grasp at her calf. In deference to the weather she had worn her thicker stockings, but the touch was a shock all the same. "Have you always kept insects as pets, my princess?" Dyana had asked. She wanted to steer the conversation away from her slippers without seeming rude; if she could get away with it she would have ripped her foot away from Helaena's grip and abandoned the table altogether. It wasn't the touch or the easily overfamiliarity that unsettled her—it was the possibility that Prince Aemond might come back in and see it.
Helaena gave her calf a gentle squeeze and rose to her feet with the grace of a girl who had been taught courtly lessons from birth. It was nearly obscene how graceful she made it look, her light blue dress flowing like water from her hips as she moved to stand gracefully. She sunk gently back into her chair and returned to her candied fruits as if she had never left them in the first place, Dyana gaping at her all the while. "Not always. Mother doesn't like insects…but now that I'm a woman she can't well guide my hobbies, can she?" Helaena said.
Dyana had to fight not to smile despite herself. The suggestion that the Queen of the Realm couldn't control her daughter's interests amused her; just how willful was the princess? "It's a fine hobby," Dyana said diplomatically. "I'm sure she'd rather you take to botany, but all mothers have hopes for their daughters, don't they?"
Helaena didn't answer, instead taking a long pull from her cup. When Dyana moved to serve her once more, Helaena's pale violet eyes snapped to hers with such sudden sharpness that it made Dyana pause.
"Dragonflies belong to order Odonata, you know," the princess said. Her voice had an eerie, musical quality to it that was directly at odds with her words. That tone is meant to give warnings, Dyana thought.
"I didn't know that, my princess," Dyana replied quietly. She refilled Helaena's cup and replaced the flagon back to the tabletop. From the corner of her eye she could spy the hazy shadow of the prince on the balcony behind the curtain.
"The order is named for teeth. Dragonflies are predators—highly effective ones. They hunt in the skies and use their serrated teeth to shred at their prey," Helaena explained. She didn't blink. She didn't move to touch her plate of food.
A slight chill that had nothing to do with the light breeze sifting in through the curtains raised the hairs on Dyana's arms. "That's fascinating," she lied.
"Do you have teeth, Dyana? You'll need some for the coming days."
Dyana didn't get a chance to respond. Before the question could truly sink in, Prince Aemond was standing right beside his sister, one of his large hands coming down to slap at the table harshly. Plates clattered. Dyana jumped.
"I think it's time for you to go find your Septa," the prince hissed to his sister. "If you're late to your studies again you'll displease mother." These were the first words Prince Aemond had said in the Common Tongue in her presence in several weeks; Dyana watched the exchange with wide eyes and white-knuckled hands, suddenly unsure why she felt so terribly afraid.
Whatever ghastly shade had entered the princess and guided her warning left her with a breath, and Helaena closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, the odd manner was gone and her good humor had returned. "You don't give me enough credit, brother. I can run faster than you think, and my Septa is often late herself. I'm in no danger of missing her lectures."
"Don't be careless with your studies. Go."
Helaena didn't bother to give Dyana a parting look before she huffed, swept from the table, and left the solar altogether. Dyana was now alone with Prince Aemond.
She struggled to stand from the table, suddenly aware that her behavior, though directed by the princess herself, wasn't fit for her station. Cheeks pink and hands shaking, Dyana pushed the chair back under the table's edge and moved to begin stacking the trays. Breakfast was now over and there was a long walk back to the kitchens. Perhaps if she moved fast enough she could take some time to center herself before—
—the prince reached out and snatched her wrist.
Dyana's hand, before reaching for the empty cups, stilled over the tabletop as soon as the prince's long, elegant fingers clasped roughly around it. His skin was several shades paler than her own, and for just a moment, Dyana froze and stared at the fine dusting of light hair over his knuckles and at the roping veins traveling over the back of his wide palm in frozen shock.
His grip was painfully tight.
"Listen to me, Dyana," he told her, voice chest-low and smooth. As if her name was a call to summons, Dyana's eyes snapped to the prince's. His good eye was darker violet than his sister's, and in this morning half-light, his gaze burned. "You are not to tell anyone of what happens with my sister here in this chamber, do you understand? No one. Not Miranda. Not Malla. Not Robert."
Dyana was nearly too surprised at this turn of events to wonder how he knew Malla or Robert's names. "I won't, I promise," she breathed to him. Her voice was quieter than she intended it to be; there were no shadows or ghosts in this room, but when he looked at her like that, half-haloed from the balcony's sunlight and as blanched as whitened bone, she could almost believe he was a storybook wraith.
He gave a sharp tug at her wrist and she nearly toppled over the table. She caught herself with her free hand, now leaning all the way over the empty trays, her eyes wide as the prince bore down closer to her. She could feel the rough callouses on his palms and fingers scraping her skin. A lock of his white hair slipped from behind his ear and brushed her hand when he pulled her closer—the forbidden intimacy tightened in her belly and dried her tongue. "I mean it," he warned. She could feel his voice in her bones, now, venomsweet and deadly, conducted so clearly as if he was speaking from inside her very marrow. "You are to tell no one. Helaena has never spoken to you. She's never touched you. If she does, you are to forget about it. You cannot let anyone know."
There was something to this warning that Dyana didn't understand, some secret layer she was missing. She understood the gravity of what the prince meant, but why give the warning at all? "I don't know what you're talking about, my prince," Dyana said quietly. She didn't dare look away from his violet eye, staring into it with a steeled conviction she didn't truly feel. "The princess has never spoken to me. She has never touched me." The lie was a quick placation, and given the sudden slack of the prince's mouth, it might have worked as intended.
Aemond dropped her hand. Dyana used it to push herself back to standing, wrist throbbing. "Good. You're to say that should anyone ever ask," he directed. When he turned from the table to retrieve his book from the balcony Dyana couldn't help but cast her stare down the length of his body, eyes lingering on the breadth of his shoulders beneath his leathers and the long black sweep of his outer cape. If she had thought before he held himself like a blade, now she knew he touched like one, too.
He might has well have cut her, for how hot her wrist felt from where he grabbed it. "Why would anyone ask?" Dyana asked to his retreating back. She couldn't help herself—the experience of being touched by not one, but two of the Targaryen heirs in the same hour had loosened her tongue to impropriety.
When Aemond turned his head to fix her with a black stare she could see the muscles in his neck tense. With his face angled just so over the notch of his shoulder, eyepatch and scarred cheek angled away, he almost looked whole, looked handsome. His violet eye cut to hers, but he didn't answer. Dyana understood what he meant—she nodded dumbly and regathered herself, understanding that the conversation was now over. She stacked the empty breakfast trays on muscle memory alone, mind numbed with anxiety as she gathered cutlery and cups, heart fluttering like a hummingbird in her tightening throat.
Prince Aemond hadn't acknowledged her existence at all in the last few weeks. Dyana would have thought the distance between them would make her forget how it felt to have him tracking her with his good eye.
His familiar stare at her back felt like a predator's track as she left the solar.
His attention was constantly pulled to the girl, his regard unwillingly magnetized to her whenever she entered a room. He hated it.
Aemond knew from the whispers around the Keep that someone had spied him leading Dyana back to the kitchen courtyard that night so many moons prior; it was a small blessing that his mother hadn't asked him about it, but he had no doubt that the watcher had been one of her spies. Had he been Aegon the rumor would have held more weight—as it stood presently, few people Aemond cared about believed the rumor at all given what they knew about him.
Helaena had asked him one morning, eyes sharp and mouth curling over the High Valyrian words, "Have you been overly familiar with my serving girl, dear brother?"
Said serving girl was standing quietly by the fireplace with Miranda, her hands forever fidgeting in an idle tangle in front of her belly. Aemond fought not to cast his eye to her. "No, I haven't," he bit out. His High Valyrian was crisper than his sister's. He would need to practice more, he knew, for his half-sister Rhaenyra and her lord husband were coming to visit soon. It wouldn't do for him to be stumbling over syllables of their ancestral language in front of Daemon himself.
That had been Helaena's only acknowledgement that she had heard any of the rumors. True to her word, it seemed like Dyana hadn't said anything to his sister about her nighttime wanderings; he still wasn't entirely convinced she hadn't been lurking in the shelves waiting for her lover.
The thought of her, barely dressed and foggy with flamewine, almost haunted him.
She carried herself with the same unpracticed self-consciousness she had the first time she served him, though her movements were smoother now; at dinners she'd flit around him like a fly, quick hands passing him cutlery and napkins and pouring him watered wine. He would fixate on her hands; blunt nails, scarred palms, old burn marks from where she had roasted meat before a spit. Dyana didn't have the smooth hands of one of the ladies of the court; her hands resembled more his own, calloused from sword fighting and dragon riding, than they did his sister's.
It took every inch of discipline he possessed not to watch her openly. He wasn't sure why he felt the urge to—but he did. He did and it bothered him. What secrets was she hiding? What was her angle, trying to cozy up to his sister and wheedle her way close to their family?
His sister seemed even more taken with the girl than he had imagined her being. At least twice a week Helaena would dismiss Miranda and call Dyana to their breakfast table. There, in their mother's solar without the watchful eye of the court or the kingsguard on them, Helaena would treat Dyana more like a friend than a servant. Aemond would watch from the balcony, form half-concealed by the gauzy curtains, as his sister chattered at their servant, touched her, laughed with her. For all of her faults Dyana was good for Helaena, he decided. His sister was rarely so engaged, and with her wedding to Aegon on the near horizon, having a small distraction in the form of a pretty serving girl couldn't hurt.
Aemond shook himself and hastened his pace to the training yard. The girl wasn't pretty, she was common and plain. Nothing special. Nothing worth regarding.
That common and plain girl sliced under his skin like the point of a blunt knife, and in his anger, Aemond took to his blades and trained with the kingsguard twice as violently as he had before.
Criston Cole had laughed in winded disbelief when Aemond disarmed him later that morning, brow shining with sweat and metal training armer dented from Aemond's attack. "What's gotten into you?" he laughed at his prince, half awed, half annoyed.
Aemond raised his sword in place of an answer.
A/N: Quick housekeeping note for anyone curious: all of the characters I write about in this story, unless explicitly stated otherwise (like Malla) are adults in their twenties at the very youngest. I am completely ignoring canon because I have no desire to write about teenagers. For the purposes of this tale please assume that the timeline of canon events is much more stretched out with months/years in between certain events.
So there we have it! Comments, questions, and criticisms all always welcome^^