Chapter Text
The Two Kings
Chapter Three
Lady Myranda Targaryen,
The Lady of Summerhall
209 AC
Simplicity was not a thing that was afforded to Myranda anymore. Too many things pulled, yanked, grated, and weighed on her.
This was the closest thing to it.
Maekars hands grip her hips and he heaves in breath after breath, head tilting back and digging into the bed as she grips the headboard above him and uses it as leverage to fuck herself down on his lap. The pace is near frantic despite their earlier tryst. But the rage that had burned through her made her feel as if it hadn’t even happened.
“Shit,” he gasps out. “S-slow down, love, slow down-“
She ignores him, not nearly close enough to a peak for her too but she has not been so fucking angry in so long. His chest is red, splotched, and covered in sweat. She enjoyed it— how his thick cock pressed and shoved her open with every rise and fall of her hips, but fuck was she so angry. Why was her sister—
She shook her head and ruts faster, chasing anything but what just transpired.
A sharp, punched out noise is ripped from his throat and she groans when her vision splits and then she is chasing it--
“Li-lift your hips,” she tells him, and when he does they both moan. But he? He sounds desperate.
“Will you slow the fuck down?” Her husband gasps beneath her.
“You’ve come two times today,” she gasps, head tilted back. “Stop bitching.”
Dragon Rider he was--but experience as his wife had made her one too.
He hisses before he moans pitifully under her. “It’s about to be three-”
Normally, the news would gratify her. She enjoyed making him loud, enjoyed his sounds, his words, enjoyed watching The Anvil, Prince Maekar Targaryen, Dragonrider, husband, living legend fall apart beneath her.
Today? She was too fucking pissed to enjoy the sight.
“Get on top,” she concedes, rolling onto her back and he grunts, shuddering in a heavy breath as he lies next to her for longer than she’d like. “Maekar-”
“Give me a fucking second,” he snaps, panting still. “My son is a fucking idiot, your sister a fucking c-” he halts his words and growls, “We have to go to fucking Ashford, Baelor and Mina are fighting again and I’m about to be a fucking grandfather.”
“And what does that have to do with you fucking me?” She demands bratily, cunt aching to be stuffed and filled just so she can forget the same very things he was bitching about.
Except for Daeron and Dacey--that she was happy for. The rest? The rest could fuck off.
“I’m an old fucking man Myranda, I need a damn second so my young wife doesn’t suck my soul out of me while she milks me of another fucking peak-” She scoffs, rolling onto her belly and then sliding off the bed. “Where the fuck are you going?” He demands, scrambling to chase her. “A second, I asked for a second-”
“Water,” she says dryly. “I’m grabbing water.”
“Oh,” her husband says more quietly, clearing his throat. “Carry on.”
She rolls her eyes at him and pads across the room. Visenya Targaryen’s rooms, once. Wide, dark, facing the ocean.Like her rooms in Runestone had. Today: she misses it more than she has in a long, long time.
She grabs her robe instead and walks across the room, shoving open the door to listen to the sound of the ocean and shudders in and out a breath. Peace: that was what she needed.
“It will be fine,” he says, grunting as he muscles his way out of bed.
He says he is getting old: but it is actually because he has spent the last week training the children on dragonback alone while Baelor had prepared and then left for King’s Landing. He knew they were likely going to be forced to Ashford and had been training the older children longer and harder than he usually did in preparation for their time without the Dragons.
“No,” she whispers. “It will not be. Even if they wed: she is too much fire. I don’t-”
I don’t know how to control her. Or stop her from hurting the people around her.
Their gifts were dangerous. Taking minds was not something meant to be toyed with, even if it was just animals. Because birds had become cats--and the way she looked at the Dragons? It worried Myranda in a way she could not shake.
Mya was…wild. In a way she really never was. Melody could be reckless, but never in a way that hurt others. Maris and Matthos, her siblings, when they were young they were reckless too. She thinks that had more to do with the age they had been before they died, especially with all of her experience in raising children.
But Mya was five and ten, a woman by their customs.
And she was so much like a child it ached. Because she could not even see she was hurting Aerion. Could not even care about the luxuries she was afforded, the privileges, the freedom she had. Instead she just hurt the people who loved her most.
And their most sensitive child would not stay away from her. He was too stubborn too.
“Stop,” he breathes, his hands sliding down her arms to hold her tight. “She is a child still.”
“The world does not see her that way.” She says softly. “And she is going to break his heart before she ever realizes it.”
“And you and I will be there for that too,” his thick beard presses into her cheek and she sighs, head tilting back into his shoulder. “She is angry at the world and takes it out on you because she knows you will never stop loving her. Just like he won’t.”
She bites the inside of her cheek and sighs, turning around into his chest.
She wanted more. So deeply.
But she does not think they ever will. Not with how hard this is.
“Becca would know what to say,” she mutters into his chest.
“Becca,” he says shortly, “Would agree with you. You have tried everything else leading up to this: if she does not learn that she must find her place without breaking everything in her way. She will not get the luxury of being around the very people she would break.”
She inhales deeply and nods.
Realistically: Becca probably would have whooped her by now. Lorra? A long time ago.
Myranda did not like corporal punishment. Delena had hit Melody once when she had told her she was not her mother and Becca never let her hear the fucking end of it. Especially considering it had been for rude behavior that was not even rude. But she does remember watching Becca spank her oldest two when they went after each other and blackened each other's eyes. And no matter how often Maekar threatened: his lashing laid in his thundering voice. “I should not have touched her,” she murmurs.
“She should not have hit Aerion. You grabbing her is not the same, especially when she refuses to see reason.” She shakes her head and sighs.
“It is not an excuse.” And it was not: but the things Mya and Aerion toyed with were dangerous.
“No,” Maekar says roughly. “But if she was not your sister I probably would have had much worse done to her than just imagining choking her.” Her nose wrinkles and she leans back and away.
“Do you think it will work?” His brows furrow before they fly up to his forehead in shock.
“If I choked her?”
She scoffs, shaking her head. “I meant Ashford.”
Stern, unflinching, and so, so ridiculous sometimes. If they were not speaking of her infuriating sister, she might laugh.
He squints and then frowns. “I have not a fucking clue. But we will talk to Aemon and Daella. They will need to assist if she decides to fly off the handle. Either Baelor or I will have to fly her back—“
She lets out a bitter laugh. “I have dealt with hoards of Royce children with no issue. My little sister—“
“It is not your fault,” he grips her arms and shakes her gently. “And Aerion should know better.”
That was a whole other issue. “Yes, and I will rest assured you and your brother will deal with that yourselves?”
Maekar grimaces, but nods. Aerion was…easier to move than Mya. Even if she was annoyed with Baelor, Aerion did tend to listen to his father and uncle much better than Mya listened to her.
His hands slide from her arms to her back and he pulls her close. “Come back to bed,” he murmurs in her ear.
Her nose wrinkles and she shakes her head. “I need to check on Mina,” she murmurs.
He groans. “Baelor was going after her-”
“Oh?” She bites out. “Was he? After he let her flee and run halfway across the castle crying?”
Maekar sighs heavily. “She will be fine-”
“She is my friend Maekar,” she bites back. “Joss found her while he was chasing the children--she didn’t even make it to me.”
Maekar grunts and pulls away, walking across the room to find his small clothes and she glares at his back. It was interesting: how easily Maekar was willing to lash into Baelor when the brothers were together and alone but anytime she spoke of it: his walls went up. It was so fucking annoying.
She shook her head and moved to her own clothes and they dressed in silence.
And when she moves to leave--his arm snatches her.
“Where are you going?” He demands as if he had not started to dress first.
“I told you-”
“She is not a child,” he bites out. “Despite acting-”
“Don’t,” she hisses, turning to face him.
Mina was--complicated.
She and Baelor never did speak after their conversation five years ago. Not when the same day the maester had declared the twins and Baelor had apparently gone near hysterical. Mina did not yearn for children like Myranda did: but had told Myra a year after the girls had been born dealing with the struggle of not being wanted by her mother and then facing the panic she experienced from her husband had hurt her into being sure that they would be the last. Mina knew realistically Baelor loved them. But he feared childbirth and the prospect of losing a second wife to it had shut out his mind from anymore of them with the weight of Dragons, Blackfyres, and the darkness that linger before them.
Then with Myranda’s vision, leaving Summerhall, returning to King’s Landing and then going Dragonstone, the birth of her brothers first son, the death of Mina’s father she could not attend with the pregnancy, the birth of the twins, her cunt of a mother, the birth of the second son, her cunt of a mother again--
Complicated. Things just complicated and kept building, so a wall sat between them.
Maekar glares at Myranda and she glares back. “You know he is wrong-”
“And she is a woman,” he bites back. “Capable of defending herself-”
“And he is a man,” she says in turn. “Capable of being a hus-”
“Enough,” he snaps.
“Do not start arguments then-” Maekar sets his jaw and his eyes remain narrowed at her. She crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her chin.
“Half the time it seems as if you hate him,” he says through clenched teeth after a moment.
“I do not,” she says shortly. “He simply frustrates me: so bloody clever and yet cannot see how his actions hurt his own wife.”
It was true: she admired his brother. He was kind, clever, and steady in the face of the court. Baelor alone, typically faced the rest of the realm while they hid away now. Her good brother preferred it that way to keep the children away and keep his brother happy. He was a doting father like her husband, sweet to them all and assisted in raising all of the children just like Maekar did. They always provided a united front. Always.
But he was so fucking blind.
“And pray do tell,” her husband bites out. “Just what he is missing so I might enlighten him?”
She glares harder at him. “That is not for me to tell.”
“She told you he fucked Joss,” he bites back.
“You knew that.” She argues. “And-”
“She did not,” he snaps shortly. “She assumed you did-”
“Correctly, she assumed correctly,” Myranda says, trying to wrangle herself away from him.
Both Baelor and Mina struggled with the same bloody thing: and both of them too blind, too fearful of what others would say, kept them from each other. And it was the most frustrating part of it. That both stood at the precipice of having a greater understanding of one another, a great closeness and yet Baelor’s refusal to accept himself because of his and Maekar’s father’s cruelties as children simply proved to Mina she was wrong. Her mother was wrong: and that one day, she would become her. And Baelor feared becoming his own father too. And for it: he buried himself. Just like Mina did.
“I am your husband,” he snaps sharply. “Stop fighting me-”
“You do not understand, Maekar,” she hisses. “What it is to be a woman-”
“So you say every time we have this fucking argument!”
She gnashes her teeth and shoves him back finally, and he does not even move a fucking inch.
“Will you-”
“Will you stop?” He growls out. “Just fucking tell me-”
“No!” She nearly yells. If she told him, he would tell Baelor. And while the couple needed to know one another: telling him herself would do far more damage than if they came to the knowledge themselves.
“Myranda-”
“Stop it!” She yells finally.
He flinches backwards and he stills.
She closes her eyes to not see him, to not see any of it.
“I will not betray her trust so you can fix his insecurities,” she says quietly after a moment. Then she opens her eyes and inhales deeply, eyes snapping to his violet, and she holds his gaze. “How did you feel when your mother told you about Gyles and Delena, and not I?”
He glares at her, genuinely angry.
Because not only was he someone who hurt her: he now would march behind Bittersteel.
And his fucking Dragon.
“It is not the same,” he says coldly.
“How is it not?” She demands. “If anything, it is worse! They have been married six years and-”
“I know!” He yells back.
And they both render themselves silent, staring at one another.
It was funny: how a couple so well-matched could face such conflict. Although now that she thinks it, she is not sure if she means herself and Maekar or Mina and Baelor.
Maekar looks away first, shaking his head and moving towards the door before he stops, hand gripping the doorframe.
She watches his back, the way his shoulders are so tense-
“He is my brother Myranda.” He says, voice tight.
“I care for him too, Maekar,” she says quietly. “But she is-”
“Your friend,” he spits out.
Her jaw sets and she grabs the first thing nearest to her. Him.
Myranda’s hands grip his doublet and she pulls him back, shoving and turning him to push him back against the door. They stare at one another and she wants to punch something, hit something, fight something. Instead she drops to her knees, and his hands fly to his laces.
They spoke more than Mina and Baelor. They were closer to Mina and Baelor. They were more diverse in bed than the other couple: Baelor sought control to shove out all of the parts of himself he could not accept even after he had acknowledged them and Mina yielded to it because she knew nothing else and was too afraid to try anything else.
Myranda and Maekar: they were different. They spoke with their words, their bodies, and while they may have argued, neither of them had issue yielding to each other. It was equal.
But raising children, managing another couple, the realm--most times it was easiest to fall into the baser pleasures while their minds toiled apart and then come back together.
Her mouth finds the tip of his cock before he is even fully freed and the soft silky skin, hot, pulsing, wide--she sucks him down as he rips at his laces.
And his hand buries in her hair.
“Fuck,” he hisses, head slamming against the door with a groan as her hands grip his hard hips. “You infuriate me some days woman-”
But so did he to her.
She moans, mouth opening wider and sucking him as she dragged her tongue back and forth behind him, the tip of his spongy cock slamming against the back of her throat when he yanks her closer and grinds against her face. His heavy cock tastes like salt, like flesh, like her. She hears him move and she looks up as he strips himself of his doublet and his tunic again, skin already sheening.
“Shit,” he pants out. “Shit-” He grinds himself deeper and she releases a breath, relaxes her jaw and swallows. He moans, loud, and humps against her mouth in little stilted movements.
She feels so fucking empty and her hands fly to her skirts.
“Don’t even try it,” he growls out, guiding her forcefully back though he keeps fucking her mouth until even just the tip of him sits between her wet lips. “Get up.”
He guides her up before he pulls her close, mouth hovering just above hers. And his hands are softer on her, nose pressing against hers.
In an apology he does not speak, but she knows he means anyways.
“It will hurt them both,” she murmurs quietly. “If he does not figure it out himself and sort it himself.” She reasons quietly. “If you do it for him: she will always wonder why she was not enough.”
His face does not quite soften in a way a regular man’s would. But his mouth loosens, his eyes unfurl, and he sighs.
“I trust you,” he says quietly. “I just hate it.”
“I know,” she says, hands settling on his shoulders. “I do too.”
He is not soft: her husband. Not in a way they write songs about. How could they? When his very reputation was built upon fire and blood, upon the field he still had nightmares about.
He turned her, shifting and leading away from the door and against the stone wall, gathering her skirts and lifting her up, thighs wrapping around his waist as he raised her above him with barely a grunt.
“Maekar-” she gasps out, eyes wide.
“We’ve done it before, woman,” he breathes out, his fisted cock under her, brushing against her wet cunt and she swallows, inhaling deeply. “Or have you forgotten?”
Last time had resulted in the bloody twins. Or at least one of the last times. The moment they’d found this position they’d fallen into one another so many fucking times she’d ended up pregnant three months after Aethan, the boy never wanting to leave their bed when he wasn’t being held. He refused to sleep in a crib and they had taken to fucking in the bloody dressing rooms when the need became too great.
It made them both too reckless. And loud. They’d fallen out of it when it attracted too much attention, to both of their annoyances.
“You like it like this,” he grunts out, pressing up, pressing in, and her head flies back, toes curling and a groan is ripped out of her as her cunt is shoved open, spread, as his cock devastates her. “That good, huh?” He asks smugly.
She cannot even respond, instead she fists his hair and yanks at him.
“Your mouth is prettier," he grunts out with a laugh. “Than your needy hands.”
“You like my hands,” she gasps out as he shifts his legs apart, hands bracing her ass and thighs with his wide, broad hands. “Oh my Gods,” she gasps out--vision blurring. “This is going to be quick,” she breathes teeth grinding and she arches herself so her shoulders rest fully on the wall and he presses deeper. “Fuck!”
“Good,” he grunts, and then he lifts her as he draws back, before letting her fall onto his cock when he snaps his hips.
They both nearly shout and her eyes snap open, looking down wildly at him.
“Maekar-” he shakes his head and grimaces.
“You need to come,” he hisses, before he does it again, and again, and again-
“Don’t stop,” she calls out, “Don’t stop, don’t stop-”
He is strong. Wide, broad, his arms as thick as her head, his thighs broader now than they had been when they first wed. He was thicker too, his belly harder, almost defined even when he just stands now. Before his strength had been just that: strength. For use, for anything he needed. She is not so sure her husband even really notices a visual difference. But she does.
Now it was purposeful. For riding, for swordfighting, for--
His teeth bare and the slide of them is loud, sopping sounding, soaked, so distractingly so.
And her peak--well, that takes her by surprise because she is so distracted watching her husband fuck her. Her vision spots in the corner first and he grins viciously. “That’s it woman,” he snarls. “That’s it!”
Her head digs back into the stone, her voice carrying and bouncing against the walls as her thighs shake and tremble.
Her stomach clenches so tightly it steals her breath, and her vision snaps white--
She barely hears his roar, despite the way it makes her ears ring. Or maybe that is the peak that strikes her mindless, rolling against him wildly as it feels as if a wave drags her across the cold sea. Her entire body convulses and her hearing returns to her--
“Take it,” he growls out. “Fucking take it-”
He pulls out as her pulsing begins to spread out and ease, and he groans as he sprays her ass with cum, then the wall behind them.
“Why,” she hisses, “Did you do that?”
He groans, pinning her against the wall. “Habit,” he grunts.
She glares over his shoulder.
“I took the bloody moon tea for a fucking reason-”
“I know,” he complains.
She hated the moon tea. She really did. It always made her moonbloods worse, longer, and made her far more emotional. “Then why-”
“It is habit,” he insists. “You didn’t take it for five months, Myra-”
A hard knock on the door stills them and they stare at each other with wide eyes.
“You two are done, yes?” Joss’ voice calls out.
Maekar groans. “What did they do now?”
“It is Lady Melody-”
Myranda feels her blood run cold.
Nestor stands at the door, grimacing as the Maester slips out, and he nearly drops to his knees before her.
“Thank the fucking Gods,” he whines out. “She is threatening-”
“It is not a threat!” Melody yells from behind the door. “I have finished. No more, never again, my teats belong to me! You and your biting spawn will never see them again!”
Maekar smothers a snort, before gripping Nestor's shoulder and leading him out of their apartments. “Let her deal with it.”
“It will heal,” Maester Orsmund says with a small smile, new, middle-aged and quiet. “I did not know the women from the Vale had such colorful language.”
“Wait until you meet my aunt,” she says with a sigh. “Thank you.”
She pushes the door open and finds Melody with her tits out, inspecting the bite around her--
“Seven hells,” Myranda hisses, grabbing her own.
“Three,” she hisses. “I wanted three! Instead I am cursed with twins twice! The first set leaves me with nearly twenty stitches, the second set leave me bedridden for months, after our cunt of a sister taking cats-”
“Speaking of,” she says, clearing her throat.
Melody looks up, squints, and bares her teeth. “What the fuck has she done now?”
“Oh,” she waves her hands like it matters little. “Slapped Aerion,” Melody’s eyes bulge, “In front of almost all the children,” her jaw drops, “Has been fooling around with him and was stupid enough to leave a hickey on him,” Melody sucks in air audibly, “And apparently he’s been giving her hickies on her tits if her reaction was-”
“He is like his father,” she gapes.
Myranda grimaces. “Can you shut the fuck up?” She demands. “We were betrothed to be married. She is--she is her.” She waves her hand in irritation and Melody snorts. “The Maester says you’ll be fine--the nursemaid will be here by tonight-”
“Is she a maid still?” Melody asks while squinting.
Myranda throws her hands up. “Who fucking knows. Oh--we are going to Ashford, and she has declared she wants to be a Spinster, “ Melody’s head jerks back and bobs. “Like Elaena Targaryen-”
Melody jerks in disbelief.
“Three husbands!” Melody yells. “That woman had three husbands, had two bastards, fucked at least two dozen more men with her last and had what, seven children? Good for Eleana but bloody hell does Mya think we’re idiots?”
“Yes,” Myranda says simply. “Oh, and I am not her mother so I cannot tell her what to do.”
Melody’s face turns murderous and Myranda shrugs, walking over to the couch. She peaks over the side, to the cradle where the blonde strawberry blonde haired twins slumber.
“They could sleep through a Dragon battle,” she mutters.
“I trained them well,” Melody says with a shrug. “With all of my yelling at the girls and Nestor when they told me I was not allowed out of bed.” Myranda smiles, but there is a bitterness in her belly too.
Because she almost lost her sister: and it had been Mya that had made her so fucking angry it put her in the damn bed so early.
When they found out she had been taking the cats for half a fucking year.
Which was why they both thought she was being such a fucking bitch. Mya had said It is not my fault I am better at it than you.
“I told her she will act as a Spinster during Ashford.” Myranda says, turning to sit on her ass on the couch. “Watch the youngest, and if she does not behave,” her mouth purses and she turns to Melody smugly. “I told her my husband will fly her back on Alios to Runstone since she wants to ride a dragon so badly.”
Melody barks out a laugh, falling onto the couch with her and Myra raises a brow at her exposed chest. “They fucking hurt. Ugh, Matthos is lucky I didn’t throw him.”
Myranda opens her arms and Melody shifts into her arms.
“I hate teenagers,” she mutters above Melody’s head.
“I know I fucked Nestor,” she mutters, “But at least I didn’t get caught.”
“You know she tried to bring that up?” Myranda says with a frown. “Maekar was ready to kill her. He was holding back for me, but even Baelor was close to yelling. Or his version of it, with the children.”
She’d seen him yell: it was scary. Scarier than her husband, but Maekar barked nearly as much as he spoke. If not more some days. But the version Baelor took with the children? Far more controlled.
Also scary.
“I’ll kill the girls if they act like that with me,” Melody tells her.
Myranda snorts. “You know, they were all lined up watching like Aerion and Mya were going to fist fight? It was kind of funny--if I wasn’t so pissed.” Melody laughs, turning to face her.
“We used to be like that,” she says to her. “Do you remember--”
“Aunt Lorra dragging cousin Lizzie by her hair across the gardens when she said she thought Uncle Beron was handsome? I do!”
They laugh together: and for a moment in the day, it doesn’t seem so grim.
She finds Mina after dinner, hidden in a little alcove she tended to find when she and Baelor…
Whatever they do. Myranda does not quite understand it. Her own husband Maekar was…not so a slave to himself as unable to not be himself. He bitched, he snapped, he cursed, and he argued. He was other things too, but Maekar just was. Whether it was lack of care of other people or just confidence in himself she doesn’t really know.
He just did not hide anymore: he had not since they left Summerhall. What he wanted, he took from her. They experimented, they enjoyed things together, and he was unashamed in it. Unabashed too. He let her take from him too. More and more the longer they had each other.
But he had been able to release himself from his father’s tight grip by finding purpose in service to his family.
Baelor…had not been so easily freed from the grip of their father. Perhaps it was because he was the heir.
And because Mina was a woman built, raised, and reared by the values that dictated her to serve her husband out of duty rather than genuine desire to do so, it made a cage for them. One they both found enjoyment in. But a cage.
One Maekar knew existed, but could not name the reasons why.
Not like she could.
It felt like a fucking curse most days.
Just like her dreams were now some nights.
“I thought I’d find you here,” she says quietly. Mina hums, turning to look at her, eyes red-rimmed and a book on her lap. Closed, unread. A prop, if anything.
“I am still too close to my blood,” she says with a high sigh when Myrand reaches for her hand and pats her hands.
“Is that what you told your husband?” Mina purses her lips.
“Perhaps,” she taps out, fingers stroking the book on her lap with a sigh.
“How did he take it?” Myranda asks, coming to sit down on the bench Mina is tucked into.
“He did not,” Mina says with a sigh. “He knew I was lying. Almost even said it.” Mina’s chin fell to her knees. “My mother asked if it was the Dornish in him that made him incapable of fathering suitable heirs.”
Myranda feels her jaw tighten, irritation welling in her belly.
Mina’s mother was a cunt. She still remembers Baelor storming through Dragonstone after the first letter--right to Maekar. They’d spent nearly a whole day fighting each other back and forth in the yards.
“I sent a letter back this time.” Mina says, a small, humorless smile pulling at her mouth.
“Oh?” Myranda asks quietly, a little smile pulling at her lips.
“Yes.” Mina purses her mouth in a sad smile though. “I also know he told you not to tell me.”
Myranda sighs and leans back against the bench. “I’m sorry.”
Mina shrugs. “He is to be the King,” she says softly between them. “I heard Mya and Aerion have--” her dark brows raise and she sighs. “I’m sorry she’s being so difficult.”
Myranda watches the little game Mina played. The one she was usually free from. The one that served her in Highgarden, in King’s Landing in the time she spent with Baelor and the boys before they came to Dragonstone.
To press or pull? She thinks to herself. Which do I fall into?
Press too far and make it worse.
Pull away too far and make it worse.
“She reminds me of my father some days,” she admits, turning away, mouth pressed into a line. “And I worry what will happen if she grows too old to realize it is how we choose to act that defines us.”
Mina's gaze flickers to her and she shifts slightly.
“Choose?” Mina questions.
Myranda smiles, closing her eyes.
“My mother used to say it is easier to be cruel than to be kind, but she would rather choose the harder path.” Mina inhales, she hears it, and when her eyes open her amber eyes are burning into hers.
“You think it is a choice, who we are?”
Too far, she thinks.
“I think how we choose to react to who we are, is what makes us in the end.” She says carefully. “I have the same ability, but more power than Mya,” her own fingers reach out to still Mina’s on the book and the girl she calls her friend lets out a breath. “But I choose to use it to protect, rather than for my own uses.”
Mina inclines her head and nods.
“Imagine what an insufferable bitch she’d be if she could Greensee like you can.”
Myranda cannot control her face, and Mina giggles, smothering her mouth with the book she pulls to her mouth.
“Still,” Myranda says after a moment. “I do not mind flying the skies as a bird some nights. When…I find I need more than what I have.”
Mina nods slowly, before yawning. “I should go to bed,” she says, cheeks pink. “We enjoyed each other before we dissolved into an argument. Quite ardently,” her brows wiggle and Myranda can tell she enjoyed her husband, she always did. The fault never lay in that: just that she could not face she also enjoyed women. Myranda thinks she got her close once, but…
Motherhood changes you.
In ways…that was not always pretty.
Just like it had burned away the child-like notions of peace, she once had. A quiet life.
As if ten children would ever be quiet? Eighteen they had amongst them now.
A bloody fucking mess they all were.
Myranda leans in close. “I am sure if you wear that nightgown the Queen gave you,” she whispers, “You might be able to get his mouth between your legs before he takes you again.”
“He prefers after,” Mina teases back, pressing a soft kiss to her cheek. “Thank you, Myra.”
“Always,” she says with a small quirk of her mouth as she watches her go.
Joss inclines his head as they pass, and his brows wiggle with a tired face as he takes Mina’s spot.
“Well,” he mutters under his breath. “Are you exhausted or is it just me?”
“Thank you,” she says, patting his leg. “For today.”
He waves off his hand. Her great friend. Her most unlikely friend. He groans, leaning back and sighing.
“Do you think he will ever figure it out?” Joss asks.
“Aerion?” She says, scoffing. “Doubtful, he will need to fall from the top of a Godstree and smack every fucking branch down before he realizes Mya is too wild ever to be had. She will have him, all of him, and she will only grant what she wills.”
Joss shakes his head, dark brow raising at her smugly.
“I meant Baelor.” Myranda frowns at him, but feels her jaw tighten. Joss smiles widely and they stare at one another for a long, lingering moment.
She breaks first: cursing.
“How does he not-”
“He always was too focused on control over pleasure,” he says, crossing his fingers behind his head and inhaling deeply. His eyes settle closed.
A tunic and sleeping trousers he sat, but a sword at his hip and knife at his ankle.
Joss was a handsome man, black hair, dark skin, dark eyes. Gay--but very much a lover of women.
“He is like that with her too,” she turns her knees up and tucks herself into the little alcove.
“You do not need to solve all of their problems.” He says, peeking open his eyes to look at her.
“If I do not, Maekar will hammer right through all of their feelings,” she says with a sigh.
Joss laughs. “Quite a father he has become,” he says, shaking his head. “Father of little demons, little demonesses, little angels, father of Dragons.” One of his hands falls on hers and he pulls her hand up to his mouth and pecks a kiss there. “At least he repays you well for the work you do in his name.”
She scoffs, ripping her hand back with a laugh and he grins at her. He toyed, sometimes, Joss. With her and Mel, never with Mina, who now she thinks, he could tell was too insecure to do so. In herself.
“If you ever wish to add a third to your duo, I am available.” He says smugly.
“Collecting brothers?” She asks, brow raised.
He grins widely. “Dyanna was no prude either: but you two…have found yourselves differently than he and my cousin did.” His voice softens and he inhales deeply. “I think they would have, but--bruised young men need care differently than bruised old men. More softness.”
“Softness?” She says slowly, because Maekar never described Dyanna as soft. Persistent, romantic, unyielding--
“Aye,” he says with a smirk. “Softer than you. I am by your bedchambers woman, I know you are no gentle, sweet maid. Have not been since at least the tents. You may be soft in spirit but you are unyielding in your beddings. Dyanna was the opposite.”
Myranda bites the inside of her cheek and nods slowly.
“We have never had a third,” she admits quietly. And she could not imagine Joss that way. Oaths he took, she knows, but most Kingsguards took whores. It was a…quiet secret they all understood and tolerated so long as the men stayed loyal. But Joss had quite a few secrets of his own. And while she did not disregard his loyalty: Myranda would never be able to yield to a man or woman in bed with Maekar who did not want her. And Joss could not. That: she realized in her five years with Maekar, was what had made it so easy to yield to him. He wanted her, her mind, her body, her soul: and she shared in it.
Five years as a mother changed her. Five years of seeing things she could never truly pin down changed her. Five years of learning the Valyrian ways, the Old ways, her and Maekar’s ways.
She did not have the same insecurities she did years ago. Now: her fears were different. They lied in Dragons in the skies, monsters at the Wall, and Mya losing herself to the mind of a Dragon. The last was a vision she had not seen: but one she feared as her sister grew more and more reckless.
Through it all: there was Maekar. There would always be Maekar. It settled her in ways she could not explain and gave her peace despite the chaos he had brought to her door. Enough to submit to it and face it openly.
They had not taken a third. Nor had they really discussed it in a tangible way.
But: she was going to have to court Lyonel Baratheon. The preening Stag they referred to as the Laughing Storm. She does not think her husband was quite his type the way they happened to be for Joss. He thought so, but she was still not so sure. But they would divert if he was.
Well, Maekar would. Of that they had already decided. Sort of, after learning he and the Prince of Dorne apparently had a fling. With his wife, Princess Daenaerys.
It truth: it was more of a if all else fails sort of plan. They needed him on their side of Bittersteel came sooner rather than later. The new heir was already infamous, but the death of his cousin and uncle had left his father and him heir.
“I know,” Joss admits. “I am only half teasing.”
“He is very handsome, though he does not see it himself.” She says with a small smile.
Joss groans, the sound far more pleased than tired.
“I would not mind bending to him.” He says, turning to her and waggling his brows. “Quite broad he has grown, since he began riding Alios.”
She sighs, turning to face him more. “He does not dare walk around without a shirt anymore in our bedchambers, not unless he has time to be bedded.”
Joss grins. “I do not blame you,” he says, waggling his brows. “Age adds to his draw, does it not?”
She giggles, head tilting back and her eyes close.
He was her preference. Distantly--she remembers her first crush.
A man he was then: tall, broad, though dark haired.
Lonnel Snow.
He was half the reason she followed Melody to Beron and Lorra so often. The older half-brother of Beron Stark, the bastard born man was more than loyal to his father and brothers then. And handsome.
It was a wonder she ever thought Gyles, lean, not so tall, and not as handsome as either of the men she admired, would suit her. She had burned the memory of the man she fawned over from her mind after Delena found out and teased her ruthlessly for loving a bastard.
As if being ten with a crush was the worst a girl could do. He had been two and twenty then. She found Maekar more handsome now though.
That could be because she saw him naked at least once a day.
Which--
“I find myself missing my husband,” she drawls out. “If you wish: I can bring up your suggestion, for him alone? I am not sure I am your type.”
Joss laughs, a little hysterically, eyes wide.
“He would gag me, my dear, and I,” he says leaning forward. “Enjoy listening to myself.”
Yes, yes he did.
She smiles and pecks a kiss against his cheek. “Goodnight, Ser Joss.”
“Goodnight my Lady,” he says coyly. “Sweet beddings.”