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Aegon Targaryen is tall, lithe, and with a silver head of hair that nearly glows beneath the firelight. The definition of fine breeding, Joanna distantly observes as he greets Lord Bran Stark and his regent, Lady Sansa, but otherwise of no immediate impression. She is her family’s keeper, though, and so stands tall, a hand on the pommel of her sword as the King speaks with her half-siblings. A bastard she may be, but the White Wolf will not be parted from her family. Eventually, the King’s gaze — purple, she notes — falls on her, and Sansa is diligent and introduces them.
“My half-sister,” Lady Stark says, “Joanna Snow.”
“The White Wolf,” Aegon murmurs, “They tell tales of your achievements, my lady.”
She is not a lady, but Joanna knows better than to correct a king. Instead, she falls to her knee, bowing her head as is appropriate. “Your Grace.”
“Rise,” the King says. His eyes flit across the lines of her armour, but then they go to linger on her eyes, on the wisps of hair that escape her severely woven braid, and on the stubborn set of her jaw. His lips quirk. “You take after your father.”
She’s heard this before, and she nods and mutters her thanks. Aegon smiles and moves on. And it is only later, in the quiet of her room, that she remembers Aegon’s never met Eddard Stark.
Both the King and Lady Stark want to hammer out a deal as quickly as possible, but negotiations are slow, and neither of them are willing to compromise. Sansa’s grown into a formidable adversary, quick-witted but deceptively demure. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, and it takes the King a while to cotton on. When he does, he turns contemplative. “You must think me a fool,” he tells Sansa, but it’s all in good humour. “I have underestimated you.”
Sansa smiles prettily, hiding the daggered points of her teeth behind her lips. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, Your Grace.”
They call for a break, and Joanna follows Sansa dutifully as she glides away from the negotiating table. The door closes behind them and Sansa sighs heavily, pouring a glass of wine to settle her nerves.
“What do you think of him?” Sansa asks. Bastard or no, Joanna is now the oldest of Eddard Stark’s brood, and her half-sister seeks her counsel often. She is not as good a judge of character as Sansa is, but Joanna’s strengths lie elsewhere, and it is her intuition Sansa seeks.
“He is kingly,” Joanna replies, “but still green. It will take some time for him to settle in his throne.”
“I think so, too,” Sansa agrees. “He is well trained. Polite.” She pauses and thinks, swirling the wine in her glass. “Unmarried.”
Joanna huffs, averting her gaze to the fire dancing merrily in its hearth. “It is only a matter of time.”
“He has not asked for my hand,” Sansa says.
“Would you wish him to?”
“No,” Sansa replies with a scoff. “But he has not asked for Margaery’s hand, either.”
At this, Joanna snorts. A long time ago, Sansa would’ve chided her for it, but the years haven’t been kind to either of them, and while ladyship has suited Sansa, Joanna was forced to grow into a warrior.
She is a woman, but not a lady.
“Perhaps he’ll seek to marry for love.”
“Maybe,” Sansa mutters. There’s a knock at the door, and the sisters startle.
“His Grace is ready to resume negotiations,” one of the King’s retinue says, and Sansa rises to her feet like she’s prepared for war.
“No rest for the wicked,” she tells Joanna. “Keep an eye on him. Maybe you’ll see something I don’t.”
The room is warm, and the King has shed the outer layers of his clothes; he has a steady figure, wide-shouldered but with a trim waist. Joanna thinks about what it might feel like to duel him, steel gliding against steel. It’s easy to fall into these imaginings: they may be negotiating things of great import (food, levies, the cost of Stark support), but the logistics of it all bore Joanna to death, so she entertains herself by tracing the firelit outline of his profile.
He has high cheekbones, and a straight nose, and a dusting of long, white lashes that line the curves of his sharp eyes. He turns those eyes suddenly towards her, and for a moment, Joanna feels her mouth run dry as she’s caught in the crossfire of his gaze. It takes her a second to realise that her sister requires her battle-expertise, and though it takes effort to drag her eyes away from the King’s, she answers without fanfare, directly to the point. Sansa uses Joanna’s answer to ask more of the King, but Aegon doesn’t immediately reengage.
Instead, he spends a few moments affixed on Joanna. The fire roars behind him, and her skin warms beneath his scrutiny.
When Aegon turns back around towards her sister, Joanna has to fight against a sigh.
She will not be so easily rattled, no matter how loaded his gaze feels.
Joanna has always been an early riser.
Spring warms the air at Winterfell, and she runs hot, so she does her morning stretches in nothing but breeches and a shirt. This way, her movements are fluid, unencumbered by restrictive leather, and she falls into the familiar movements with grace. As the sun rises over the courtyard, she breathes in its light and exhales out the tensions of the week. The heat of her exertion mists in the cold morning air: she is a furnace that cannot be extinguished even by the northern chill. She feels a prickle of awareness at the back of her head, and with her stretches done she turns.
King Aegon watches her from above. Sansa is by his side, ever the attentive host, but he doesn’t look as if he’s listening to a word she’s saying. Joanna’s breath is heavy from the sport, but she tries to calm her beating heart as she keeps his lilac gaze. Joanna realises that she must make an odd sight. Accepted as she is by her kinsmen, she forgets that she is, ultimately, a woman. It is unbecoming of women to act as she does, she remembers Lady Catelyn saying, but Joanna has never taken Lady Stark’s advice to heart, for she is even lesser than a woman: she is a bastard.
But Aegon Targaryen does not look like he’s beholding a bastard. He drinks in the sight of her as if he’s been parched for centuries. The moment feels weighty, suspended in time, and it takes a subtle intervention from one of the Kingsguard to draw him back to reality. The King startles, and then he turns to Sansa with a smile that’s meant to charm and disarm. He avoids looking at her again, but Sansa is not so easily fooled: she looks at Joanna as if she might be able to parse out meaning from her half-sister, but Joanna can think of one thing only as she watches them leave.
There will be a crown of laurels on her head, and the King will be the one to put it there.
She does not know where the thought comes from, but it strikes through her like lightning and leaves her breathless and starved.
“He makes this too easy,” complains Sansa, her hooded gaze affixed on King Aegon’s back as he talks to his retinue in the great hall. “I cannot help but suspect him of ulterior motives.”
“Such as?” Joanna asks in return, keenly aware of every twitch of the King’s finger, every nod of his head, the very orientation of his body. He is unlike any man she’s ever met, Joanna thinks. The sight of him captures her attention in ways she cannot understand. And she thinks he might feel the same way.
Sansa shakes her head and purses her lips.
“That, I do not yet know,” she says quietly. “He gives me everything I ask for, within reason. He could have negotiated harder. Could have done and said any number of things — I wish he would,” Sansa laments.
“You wish he would make it more difficult?”
“I wish,” Sansa laments, “he would tell me what he wants.”
King Aegon lifts his head from across the room. The sight of his eyes electrifies her. They have not exchanged more than the requisite pleasantries between each other, and yet she cannot breathe. Sansa watches her face change and sips at her wine and thinks in silence; the kind of silence that would usually tip Joanna off that her half-sister ruminates in ways that do not bode well. But she is caught in Aegon’s gaze, and she thinks that even wolves are prey beneath the shadow of dragons.
And yet — she does not feel like prey.
“You’ll figure it out,” Joanna replies distantly to Sansa, “I’m sure.”
Sansa hums, links her arm through with Joanna’s, and guides her out of the hall in amicable silence. They leave the noises of the hall behind, the King behind, and Sansa leads her through the keep, right on back to where their private quarters are. And that is where Sansa turns her around.
“Joanna,” Sansa says, considering a lock of her hair, “what do you really think about the King?”
Morning finds her in the courtyard again, and this time, stretches are not enough. Joanna is embarrassed: in an infuriating display of gall, her half-sister has disassembled her down to her bones and left her with nothing to grasp but the tattered shreds of her pride. She insinuates than Aegon — King Aegon — might be in pursuit of something other than material means from Winterfell, that Joanna herself might fetch a good —
Joanna Snow, she reminds herself with gritted teeth as she slashes furiously against the pell, is a bastard. To suggest a King might take interest is absurd. Whatever this is — this fascination she had — is just that, a fascination. She has never dreamt of princess tales, has never desired to be anything but herself, and has achieved an honourable station regardless.
She is the White Wolf. Not a queen, not a prize, and most certainly not flesh to be bartered off to satisfy a King’s hypothetical whims —
“Lady Joanna. If I may interrupt?”
Instinct burns hot and she twists on her heel to point her blade at the intruder; King Aegon lifts his hands in immediate surrender, lips curled in a twisted little smile. His Kingsguard reach for their weapons, but when Joanna stills and makes no move to slash at the Targaryen’s throat, they relax.
King Aegon clears his throat, chancing a press of his finger onto the flat of her sword to push it gently away. “Apologies. I should know better than to interrupt a warrior’s routine.”
Joanna doesn’t know what to say. He is there in the morning dew with her, silver hair charmingly disheveled, dressed in what can only be a set of training clothes. The hollow of his throat is —
She swallows and lowers her blade, palming the pommel nervously. “Your Grace,” she mutters, bowing her head briefly at him. “I should be the one to apologise. I am not typically caught… unawares.”
“You do seem preoccupied,” the King replies, tilting his head at her as if he can suss her out. “Are you alright, Lady Joanna?”
“Please,” she says, “just Joanna. I am no lady.”
Aegon is quiet for a few long moments, but keeps that mysterious little smile on his face. “Joanna,” he tests. “It is a good name. Did your mother pick it for you?”
She does not know much about her mother. Eddard Stark died before he — “No,” she replies. “My father.”
“Ah,” Aegon says pleasantly. “I see.”
“I am named for Jon Arryn,” she explains. “He fostered my father —”
“Yes,” Aegon interrupts. “Your father and the former King Robert.”
“...yes,” Joanna says, ducking her head. The air thickens. King Aegon must not enjoy thinking of the Baratheon reign that preceded his, but if the mention of King Robert has soured his mood, he doesn’t show it. His eyes do not stray from her, and he continues to smile placidly. She realises now that the King must have come here to train; Joanna startles and straightens and takes a few hasty steps back.
“Apologies, Your Grace,” she says. “I will clear the grounds for you. It’s a beautiful morning; I expect the skies will remain clear for at least another hour or two —”
“Actually,” the King interrupts her again, “I was hoping you might do me the honour of a spar.”
Joanna blinks. She thinks she must have misheard. “A… spar?”
King Aegon unsheathes his blade. Valyrian, she’s sure. “It is not often I get to test my mettle against the legendary White Wolf.”
Part of her wants to bristle. This is beneath him, she knows. He sounds like he makes a mockery of the struggles she’s been through to gain the moniker — but it doesn’t feel like it. He is not driven by antagonism or arrogance. It’s… curiosity. She sees it in his eyes, a sharp-edged, uncontainable desire to cross blades.
This has nothing to do with her being a bastard, or the White Wolf.
This is something else.
She does not know what. But the suggestion alights something within her, and her expression grows wolfish, slightly feral and goading in the way she only looks like when she’s sizing up her prey. King Aegon sees this change in her, and something in his gaze darkens in return. Joanna does not need to verbalise her agreement: they wordlessly fall into step, circling each other with the silent intent of a predator at hunt.
They both strike at the same time, and their blades clash loudly. She, too, wields Valyrian steel, and the sound of steel against steel echoes sharply across the courtyard, ringing in her ears like a death-knell. Aegon is strong, stronger than her — as men typically are — but Joanna is quick and flexible. She does not let him leverage his strength against her, and instead slides her blade away and dances out of his reach, letting him pursue and give chase.
Sparring with the King is… fun. He doesn’t take it too seriously, and neither does she, and they fall into a rhythm of push-and-pull that’s akin to the rolling tides of the sea. Aegon is swift, surefooted, and entirely too tactical — she realises in the nick of time that he’s trying to corner her, and ducks under his arm to dance out of his trap. He laughs, lilac eyes glinting with delight, and she grins, determined to win, and then they cross blades again.
She doesn’t realise how quickly time passes them by, caught as she is in the moment. Eventually, she begins to feel the strain of exertion, the shaking of her arms, a slip in attention. This is no battle to the death, and Joanna grows tired of the play acting — she will put an end to their spar and claim victory for herself. But the King has similar ideas, it seems, because his swings get harder, his pushes more forceful, and his gaze grows sharper. Though she tires, this is exactly what Joanna needs to stir her into action. She is not fool enough to meet King Aegon head-on: he will overpower her, and she will lose what little advantages she has from the litheness of her frame. The King knows this, too, and presses on: he attacks with renewed flourish, and keeps her on the backfoot. Joanna knows this stalemate must end, one way or the other, and decides to play dirty.
As it turns out, King Aegon has much of the same thought.
He brings his blade up into a great arc. At first, she believes it to be a signal of fatigue or impatience, so she twists her blade and tries to leverage this opening, but it is a trick, for Aegon has no intention of finishing the arc. Instead, he slides his arm low, aiming to strike the back of her knees with the flat of his blade.
Dirty and unfair.
Survival of the fittest.
Joanna does not try to step away. His reach is too long, and he is too swift, and she’ll just trip and fall and make a fool of herself. While his arc is still high enough, she steps into his space, juts her elbow under his arm to lock his swing in place before he can finish it and then brings her blade to rest right beneath his jaw; his is by her ear, and they both freeze.
He is a head taller than her, and his throat is slick with sweat.
She wants to lick it off.
The thought nearly bowls her over, and Joanna can’t hear much of anything other than the frantic beating of her heart, or the rush of blood in her ears. Now that they’ve reached a stalemate, the courtyard falls silent. She sees King Aegon’s throat bob, and feels the ragged brush of his breath against the top of her head, and so she chances a look up towards him.
His eyes are blown, more black than lilac. So close to him, she can feel the flutter of his heartbeat, heavy and hard in his chest, pulse jumping in his throat. She licks her lips and tastes the salt, and Aegon’s gaze flutters down.
She is arrested, and only just barely manages to speak. “Do you yield?”
Her voice is a whisper. Aegon swallows again. “It seems I must.”
The timber of his voice feels rough in his chest, and she doesn’t have the strength to step away from it. Aegon, too, seems stuck, but eventually he reels himself back in, lifting his sword arm away from her and running his free hand through his hair with a shaky sigh. She is left cold by his absence, and her arm drops to her side, tip of her sword resting in the dirt.
They stare at each other and say nothing as they catch their breaths. She traces the planes of his face: his eyes, his lashes, the high points of his elegant cheekbones, his straight nose, the Dornish tan of his skin, his lips, reddened by the cold and glistening wet with the way he licks them —
Joanna inhales sharply and steps away, bowing her head curtly in his direction. “Thank you for the spar, Your Grace,” she manages to mutter, heart caught in her throat. “It was —” something. She nods again and turns on her heels, stalking back into the keep with her heart roaring in her ears, feeling the brand of his gaze lick fire into her back.
His chest slides across her back as he fucks her from behind, teeth fastened to her throat to leave bright-red marks across the pale expanse of her skin. She barely has any voice left to moan: he holds her tight against him with one arm while the other works her into a frenzy, making her clench around his cock as he pumps in and out of her. When he doesn’t bite, he whispers all manner of things in her ear: she is beautiful, she is his, she is beloved. She is shaped in the image of greatness, and she belongs to him just as he belongs to her. She’s so tight she will milk a son right out of him, and by the Gods, he loves her.
He presses deep inside her, hips tight against her buttocks, and manages to draw out a long, earnest whine from her throat.
She does not see his face. But the imprint of King Aegon’s soul is unmistakable.
Joanna wakes in her bed, sweating and disoriented.
There’s an ache deep in her loins. She presses her thighs tightly together and tries to chase away the feeling.
Dragons dance in the sky, and with them arrives the Princess of Dragonstone.
There’s an ease to Daenerys Targaryen that Joanna doesn’t find reflected in her nephew. She is a free spirit, she explains to them, and though she tried her hand at ruling — in Mereen, apparently — she finds herself happier without the responsibility.
“I am a dragonrider first and foremost,” Daenerys says over dinner, her features softened by the candlelight. “I will support my nephew in all he needs, but I am quite content living life as I please.”
The King laughs into his cup by her side. They are both so easy on the eyes, Joanna thinks: they share the same silver hair, the same nose, even the same smile. In celebration of the Princess’ arrival, Sansa’s organised a party, but since Daenerys doesn’t like showy displays it’s an intimate affair, just them and the Hand of the King and the King’s personal guard, and the Starks and Joanna. When she was young, Joanna was never allowed to sit at the table with their lordly guests, but now that she’s overcome the limits of her bastardry, she is allowed to sit with the main family. Bran, in his capacity as Lord Stark, occupies the middle seat, opposite the King, of course, and he’s flanked by Sansa and Rickon on either side. Joanna sits next to Sansa, diagonal from Princess Daenerys, straight across from the King’s guard.
Ser Rolly — or, Ser Duck, as the rest of them call him — has a shock of red hair atop his head and a humorous disposition that makes Joanna side-eye him uncertainly. He points a chicken leg in her direction and compliments her on her display at her spar with the King, which makes Sansa and Princess Daenerys both turn their heads sharply in her direction.
“You sparred with the King?” Sansa asks, narrowing her eyes.
“Did you knock him flat on the ground?” Daenerys suggests, nursing her glass with amusement in her eyes.
Joanna falters in the crossfire of their attention, and, though she doesn’t mean to, searches the King’s gaze for help. King Aegon seems at ease as he watches her over the flame of a candle, and a little smile pushes into his cheek. He is of no help, and instead, Joanna feels the tips of her ears grow red.
“It was a challenging fight,” she mumbles. “The King is a suitable adversary.”
The King’s expression immediately grows scandalised, and Ser Duck snorts. “Suitable,” he chortles. “Hear that? King Aegon is suitable.”
“The White Wolf is known not to be so easily impressed,” Sansa is quick to say, covering for Joanna’s lack of finesse with a smooth recovery of her own as she meets Princess Daenerys’ gaze. “I am certain she only means to praise.”
“I do,” Joanna says. “It was an enjoyable spar.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” the Princess says, throwing a glance towards her nephew. “What do you think, Aegon?”
King Aegon is rueful. “I’d hoped to leave more of an impression,” he says. “But I’ll satisfy myself with ‘enjoyable’.”
There’s an undertone to his undertone, Joanna thinks. The King’s gaze lingers over her as he sips at his wine, tongue flicking out to catch a stray droplet that leaves a red stain on his lips. Joanna’s ears burn even harder, and she feels the heat descend into her cheeks.
Sansa watches this happen with growing suspicion, which Joanna will later insist is misplaced. But since she is a consummate lady, her sister clears her throat and changes the subject. “How are you finding Winterfell, Your Grace?”
Princess Daenerys allows it. “It’s beautiful,” she says. “Colder than I’m used to, I admit, but from above…”
The discussion turns to the Princess’ dragons. There were three of them once: Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion, and Daenerys’ tone turns mournful when she speaks of Viserion’s death following a bolt to the heart during the conquest of King’s Landing.
“Aegon had bonded with him,” Daenerys says. King Aegon doesn’t speak, turning his gaze down, and Daenerys sighs. “Losing him was… hard on us both.”
“I cried for two weeks after Shaggydog died,” Rickon pipes up from the other end of the table, voice small.
“That’s right,” Daenerys mutters. “You, too, are bonded with direwolves.”
“We were,” Sansa explains, growing weary in the same way she does whenever she talks about the time before they retook Winterfell from the Boltons. “They became lost to us, in time.”
“I’m sorry,” Daenerys says, reaching a hand across the table to place it over Sansa’s. “I understand this loss.”
“What of yours?” King Aegon asks suddenly. Joanna lifts her head and realises he’s talking to her. One of his long fingers is tracing the rim of his glass. “Your moniker… I’ve heard it comes from your direwolf.”
“Yes,” Joanna replies, hands in her lap. “The White Wolf is literal. Ghost had white fur and crimson eyes. He was the runt of the litter,” she recalls, lips twisting into a smile, “but he grew to be the strongest of them all.”
King Aegon’s gaze is intense. “I haven’t seen him around.”
Here, Joanna bites her lip. “He… left,” she says. “Once we’d retaken Winterfell. I… think he knew he was no longer needed. I expect I’ll see him again someday, but… he is and always was free to roam however he pleased.”
“Direwolves are not pets,” Sansa adds. “Our Lord Father made sure we understood that.”
Aegon exchanges a glance with Daenerys. “Dragons aren’t pets, either,” Daenerys says. “Would you like to meet them?”
Rickon tries to run towards the two dragons with reckless abandon, but Sansa tugs him back by the shoulder, mindful to keep a respectful distance from their mouths and sharp teeth. The Princess and the King have no such compunctions. Daenerys is greeted by the black dragon with a puff of heated air. She smiles and presses her cheek to his maw without fear of violence, and judging by the way Drogon’s eyes close like a satisfied cat’s, and the deep chitter he emits from his long throat, it seems such a fear is unwarranted.
The King, by contrast, is not as loving with the green one: they are not bonded, Joanna remembers. But Aegon does brush a hand across the beast’s hard scales, and the beast allows it.
Daenerys turns. “This is Drogon,” she says of the beast beneath her palm, and then she points to the green one. “And that is Rhaegal.”
“They are… impressive,” Sansa tries. Rhaegal huffs, the spikes over his neck rippling with movement, and he lifts his head with a low whine.
Joanna is caught and entranced.
“You can come closer, if you like.”
It’s the King who speaks, and he speaks to her. Joanna stiffens for a moment, but Rhaegal’s eyes are bronze and wet and they slit when he looks at her. She will not be harmed: Joanna feels this in her bones. She takes a step forward, and then another, and another, and doesn’t falter even when Sansa utters caution. Rhaegal rises, drawing Drogon’s attention, and they both turn their focus on her.
She should be fearful. Joanna feels nothing but excitement. Drogon’s eyes drag across her, and then he dismisses her, returning to the Princess with a gentle push to encourage more affection. But Rhaegal lingers, and approaches.
His snout is larger than her head. She sees his nostrils flare and smells the scent of smoke and sulfur. Her heart is pounding in her chest, and she forgets she has an audience. It is just Rhaegal and Joanna, and a bond forged in fire and blood.
She presses a hand to his snout, and Rhaegal lowers his head until it’s flat on the ground. Her nails drag across his scales, and he chitters, content.
“Wow,” Joanna breathes. She’s exhilarated. Daenerys smiles knowingly from Drogon’s side and exchanges glances with King Aegon.
But Sansa has grown pale, and she watches Joanna as if she does not know her.
Aegon’s eyes are blown and dark as he watches her ride him, fingers twisting in the soft flesh of her hips as he tries to chase after her. Joanna doesn’t let him: she splays her hands over his sculpted chest and rises to hold only the tip of his cock inside her. Aegon groans, head falling back against the pillows as his hair splays like a silver halo around him, and Joana smiles, slowly descending to return her hips against his and tighten her muscles around him. He’s a bit slack-jawed, but the intensity of his gaze doesn’t fade. His hands tighten into her hips, and before she can run away again, he pushes up with swiftness and strength and strikes her at her core. She sees stars and bows over him, and Aegon takes advantage of her momentary weakness to wrap his arms around her and push hard, deep, and quick inside her.
“Can’t you see?” he hisses in her ear. “I am yours —”
The water of the basin is cold as she splashes it across her face, but Joanna must return to normal.
The King will be gone soon. She hopes he will take these wretched dreams with him.
Sansa waits for her in the crypts, thoughtful as she looks up toward the statue of Eddard Stark. They had it made long after his death, but both she and Sansa were involved to make sure the sculptors captured his likeness as accurately as possible. As it is, Joanna feels like a child whenever she comes here, stuck beneath her father’s mighty gaze.
“Things were always so simple before King Robert arrived,” Sansa muses quietly. “Father made everything feel so easy.”
Joanna agrees. “Lord Stark had a clear vision of the world.”
Her sister hums. “You never call him Father,” Sansa points out. There’s no hint of reproach in her voice, but she does sound curious. Leading. “Why?”
Joanna feels grief twist into a knot inside her. “I was never a daughter,” she says. “Not properly. And he was — he was a Lord, first and foremost. A bastard was… couldn’t, be a priority.”
A pause. “He loved you,” Sansa says.
“Yes,” Joanna agrees. “But I am what I am.”
Sansa exhales harshly, turning away from Eddard Stark to face Joanna properly. “One of the first things I learned in King’s Landing is that few things are ever as they seem,” she says. “And Father… he seemed so honest, all the time, up to a fault. And yet even he lied to save his family. They still killed him for it, but…”
Joanna watches as Sansa’s throat closes up, but Sansa is quick to compose herself.
“I think he lied about you too, Joanna. I don’t think you’re his daughter at all.”
Whether she is fathered by Eddard Stark or Rhaegar Targaryen, it shouldn’t matter: a bastard is a bastard, no matter whose seed she comes from. But to Sansa, it does.
“I think the King knows,” she tells Joanna, lining a strip of black silk across the pale curve of Joanna’s shoulder. “And I think he wants you.”
Faced with this accusation, there is little Joanna can say. Not when it would mean revealing that she’s dreamt of Aegon’s lips, of his hands, of his cock — he is her brother —
“Half-brother,” Sansa mutters. “Do not forget, Joanna: Targaryens have married siblings for generations, and he is remarkably unwed. I do not think it a stretch to believe that he might want —”
“I refuse to be paraded as some sort of cheap whore —”
“I am not suggesting,” Sansa says, “that you should be paraded.”
Joanna scoffs, running her fingers through her hair. “What do you call this, then?” she spits, gesturing to the expanse of black-and-red fabrics her sister — cousin — has pulled out. Targaryen colours. “What are you making me into, if not a prize?”
“Bait,” Sansa says curtly, icily. “The negotiations are nearing an end, and I do not want to be blindsided by any sudden demands about you. I want you to draw the truth out of him, Joanna.”
“How?” Joanna asks desperately. “I am nothing. A bastard —”
“You,” Sansa interrupts her harshly, “are a woman. And much as I can sympathise with your plight, it does not matter whether or not your parents were wed. King Aegon wants you; I’ll make damn sure he doesn’t get you for cheap.”
At night, she cannot sleep. Joanna wrestles between dreams and wakefulness, and tries to avoid both, for the King awaits her at every turn. She feels cornered and captured, torn between her loyalty to the Starks and her desire for freedom; and yet capitulation lingers in her dreams with the lustful promise of what he might do to her, might mean to her. It is altogether too dramatic of a development, but Joanna feels it in her bones. Rhaegal feels it too; his distant yowls echo with the phantom of her own anxiety.
It is the witching hour, and Joanna knows she cannot pretend nothing has changed. So she rises from her bed and dresses quietly: nights are still very cold, so she bundles herself up as necessary and then quietly departs the keep. The dragons await a short horse ride away; Rhaegal seems happy to see her, and much like Daenerys the day before, Joanna reaches for his maw as if he can chase away the fear in her heart.
Joanna thinks about Daenerys, then. She is, by her own account, a free woman, able to do as she pleases. Joanna thinks it might be difficult to control a woman who has a fire-breathing, flying beast by her side, and wonders if this means that she, too, will always be free, no matter what happens.
Bastard, woman. Which is worse, she wonders?
“Joanna.”
Aegon finds her, even here. Rhaegal chitters as she turns towards her half-brother. Her dragon trusts him, he who rode Viserion. She thinks about the bond she feels in the sinews of her heart and mourns the bond that Aegon lost. It does nothing but sharpen the edges of her own grief into dagger-sharp points: she is bleeding aspects of herself, and it is all Aegon’s fault.
“Your Grace.”
The King looks tired. “When Rhaegal quieted,” he starts, “Dany suggested you might’ve come to soothe him.”
Joanna bites her lip. The Princess never gave her permission to visit her beasts; she thinks she might’ve overstepped. Woman or bastard? Bastards have no rights, dragons be damned, but if she has dragon’s blood, then shouldn’t she be allowed to seek her kin?
Joanna does not answer. Rhaegal croons, pushing his head into her back like a cat seeking assurance. The King looks unsettled by her silence, but approaches slowly.
“Lady Joanna,” he tries again.
“I am no lady.”
A huff. “Joanna.”
She cuts him off. “Is it true?” she asks, keeping a palm splayed on Rhaegal’s head. A hint of confusion enters Aegon’s eyes but Joanna keeps her head held high: in this, she is not supplicant to the King. It is he who answers to her.
Aegon’s silver brows furrow. “Is what true?”
Saying it aloud feels absurd, but Rhaegal is solid beneath her fingers and his heat does not burn, but soothe. Her soul is entwined with his, and as she hesitates, seeking her dragon’s comfort, Aegon’s face softens as understanding dawns over him. Still, he does not speak.
He is cruel, and forces her to face the truth.
“My father,” Joanna says. “You told me I take after my father.”
Aegon’s throat bobs when he swallows. “You do.”
“How would you know that?”
The King chances another step forward, approaching her with the same care one might a trembling fawn. “Because I see him in the mirror every day,” Aegon says. “In my eyes, my nose, my cheeks, my jaw. I see him in you, too.”
Joanna is no fawn. Dragonsblood or wolfsblood — whatever courses through her veins, she is not prey, and she will not let Aegon trap her. Rhaegal rumbles behind her in agreement: sheep bones dot the landscape around him, from where he gorged himself on their flesh. He is not hungry, but he’ll make an exception for her.
Aegon might be a friend, but Joanna is kin.
The King’s eyes flash towards Rhaegal’s for a moment, and then he splays his hands out to Joanna. “You are the daughter of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark,” he says. “You are a Targaryen. Like me. Like Dany.”
“I am no Targaryen,” the White Wolf declares. “A bastard cannot inherit names.”
Aegon doesn’t even blink. “You are no bastard,” he counters, and thus completes her ruination. “You are a trueborn daughter of House Targaryen, Joanna. So say the records at the Citadel in Oldtown.”
One day, she will love Aegon Targaryen.
But today, she loathes him.
Joanna does not recall wanting to lash out at the King, but she is there anyway, pushing at his shoulders with a vengeance that’s uncharacteristic of her. She is of a solemn sort, but he has driven her to anger, and if he expects she will welcome this intrusion into her hard-won life with anything but vitriol, he is a fool unworthy of his crown. Joanna takes him by surprise as she slams into him and he staggers, but in the absence of a weapon she is just a woman striking at a man with reckless abandon.
Aegon is taller, wider, stronger. He captures her wrists and folds her close to his chest, keeping her locked in so tight she’s unable to do anything other than strain against him as his heart thump-thump-thumps next to her ear. He is solid and warm and powerful and when he puts his chin over her head and croons quietly at her Joanna can’t help but cry.
“It’s alright,” he says. “You’re alright. My beautiful, strong, cunning sister.”
It should feel wrong. She cannot imagine reaching for Robb Stark in the same way, but Aegon is something else entirely. She manages to catch hold of his jaw and he loosens his grip on her just enough that she can tilt her head up. Aegon presses his lips over her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, kissing into her tears as if his affection could do anything to chase away her grief. It’s not nearly enough. Her desire for him is ravenous, so she clutches his jaw even tighter and locks him in place as she slots her lips over his and swallows the surprised noise he makes.
But Aegon does not protest.
Their lips slide together, wet and salty. His long-fingered hands sear brands into her flesh when they curl around her skull to bring her even closer, and when she presses herself flush against him he groans into her mouth. The sound sends a jolt of excitement between her legs, and it’s all she can do not to rut shamelessly against him. Aegon already lets go of her lips and travels to her jaw, peppering her skin with open-mouthed kisses that turn to ice in the cold air as his fingers begin to dig beneath the wool of her collar.
The King is no king at all in their embrace, turned to putty in her hands. Joanna pulls away. Aegon follows mindlessly, his lips wet and eyes dark with want. It should feel strange to see her dreams come to life, but instead, she feels steady.
Fire courses through her veins, and it has tempered her pain into ice.
“If you want me,” she tells her kingly brother, breath misting over his lips, “you will have to fight for me.”
Then she pushes into his shoulder with a strength she shouldn’t have, and Aegon staggers, breathing heavily as he watches her return to her horse. Morning hasn’t even had time to dawn over Winterfell when she makes it home, but that’s alright.
She is new anyway.
Not much changes even after dawn comes. Joanna is still the White Wolf, still a staunch Stark protector, still her family’s keeper. Sansa knows her secret, but she keeps it safe until such a time as it shall suit her needs, and so Joanna pretends.
King Aegon’s gaze never leaves her. She feels its intensity in her lower stomach, curling like a firebrand. At night, she remembers the feel of his skin, his hair, his lips. She imagines what it might be like to let him slide his tongue down the column of her throat, to let him lick and suck until she’s red and raw and begging for more. These are thoughts she keeps to herself: she burns for him, but he must never know, or he will keep her like a songbird and never let her stretch her wings. So she keeps her head forward, and her shoulders straight.
Much like Ghost, she will continue being Joanna Snow until such a time Joanna Snow is no longer needed.
But Aegon does not contain himself as well as she does.
Her back slams against the wall, teeth chattering in her skull. Aegon is upon her with a fury she does not expect, but she, too, is furious. Joanna bites and sucks his bottom lip into her mouth as he tries to find a way to slip his fingers beneath her armour. The clasps of her leathers are too tight and complicated, and he is far too distracted, so he abandons his pursuit and instead lifts her up against the wall, clutching her thighs so hard he surely leaves marks. He swallows her surprised yelp and smiles into her kiss as he rolls his hips against her core. He is rock-hard under his breeches. Joanna’s voice turns into a moan and she tilts her head back, letting Aegon attack her throat with reckless abandon.
“I wish I could fuck you,” he confesses into her skin as her fingers dig into his scalp. She pulls him up, back towards her lips, and Aegon thrusts into her again, leaving her slack-jawed as he huffs a grin in her direction. “But I will not dishonour you.”
Joanna wants to tell him that this filth is already dishonour enough, but he kisses her again, and she promptly forgets her protestations. His kiss is hard and insistent, ravenous now that he’s had a taste of her. It must be the Targaryen in his blood, she thinks, and then adds that it must be the Targaryen in her blood, too.
He is a maelstrom she is caught in, and can never escape. Aegon’s breath shakes as he pulls free of the kiss with a wet sound; his lips are swollen and his hair messy from her explorations. Her heart pounds in her chest and she tries to pull him back in, but Aegon stays back, letting go of her legs slowly until she rights herself.
“I will bring you with me to King’s Landing,” he swears. He looks a marvel like this, mussed up and ruined; she wonders what she must look like to him. “And I will make you my Queen.”
Joanna licks her lips and watches him track the movement like a hawk. “I do not want to be kept, Your Grace.”
Aegon shakes his head. “Dragons are not pets,” he says, bringing a hand up to her jaw and his thumb to her lips. It’s clear he wants to press it in, to hook his finger behind her teeth and pull, but he contains himself, and shudders. “Call me Aegon.”
Courtesies are a lady’s best weapon, Sansa says. And so Joanna steps out of his reach with an icy smile, and slightly bows her head. “Your Grace.”
A flash of frustration passes over his face, but the King says nothing else as they part, going their separate ways. Before she turns the corner, Joanna chances a glance behind her.
Aegon’s gaze sears its mark into her soul, and yet, Joanna slips away.
If she waits until the King decides to act, she will surely go mad. Joanna must take her fate into her own hands, and understand what her options are. It is with this thought in mind that she slips out of the grounds and heads out to where Drogon and Rhaegal roost; she is only somewhat surprised to find Daenerys is already there.
“I knew you would come,” her aunt says. “I dreamt it.”
Dragon dreams are real, Daenerys reveals, and Joanna wonders how much of her own are prophetic or simply wishful. “Did you ever see me in your dreams?” she asks instead, leaning into the heat of Rhaegal’s body.
“Yes,” Daenerys replies. “I did. I saw you astride Rhaegal, more wind than matter, blade in hand, like the warrior-queen Visenya.”
“Is this why Aegon knew to find me?”
“Aegon knew to find you because he knew you in his heart,” Daenerys replies dryly. “At first I was convinced I was seeing Aegon’s sister in these dreams.” An awkward pause. “His older sister, I mean. Rhaenys, daughter of Elia.”
Joanna sighs. “Instead, you saw Visenya.”
“If the imagery suits,” Daenerys says with a shrug. Drogon purrs beneath her touch. It is a strange thing, to see a beast so large brought to heel by nothing but a scritch. “Much like the White Wolf of Winterfell, Visenya Targaryen was a stern and serious woman, unafraid of battle.”
“Is that what you think?” Joanna retorts. “That I’m unafraid?”
“I think all of us are afraid,” Daenerys reveals. “But I do not think you are afraid of battle. Gods only know, you’ve survived plenty. No. You are afraid of Aegon.”
“The King means nothing to me,” is Joanna’s kneejerk response, but a raised eyebrow from Daenerys makes her flush to the tips of her ears. “...what would you have me say?”
“The truth.”
“The truth, Princess?” Joanna inhales, looking towards Rhaegal. “I have clawed my way into some semblance of meaning: a bastard is no one, but I have become someone regardless. What you suggest — what the King suggests — makes me wonder what purpose this struggle has all been for, if you will just erase my burdens and fashion me into a southron Queen.”
“I think life is a little more complicated than that,” Daenerys replies. “We are meant to fly, not sit still upon an earth that will suck us dry, Joanna.”
“That is easy for you to say,” Joanna says, nodding at Drogon. “You have a dragon.”
“So do you,” Daenerys retorts. “Come. Let me show you the winds, Joanna, and then I will ask you if the White Wolf wants to remain confined to her forest.”
Her thighs burn with the strain of holding onto Rhaegal, but her heart is filled with ecstasy, and high above the clouds, there is nothing that can stop her.
She is Joanna, and she is free.
Joanna finds a letter and a dress when she returns to her room. At first she thinks the King might’ve overstepped some boundaries, but once she turns her eye to the letter she realises it’s from Sansa. Her cousin doesn’t spend much time on empty platitudes, and instead opts to express herself honestly and directly in ways that would not otherwise come easily to her.
I did not have a choice when the Lannisters married me to Tyrion.
In honour of the White Wolf’s service to House Stark, I extend the choice to you.
Sansa could’ve simply said she loved her, but Joanna accepts this in lieu of sentiment, and looks, instead, at the dress. She finds that Sansa decided against the use of Targaryen red in the garment, and rather embellished the black silk with underlayers of white and grey. The White Wolf, she thinks immediately, is not identifiable as belonging to a noble house, but the dress is unmistakably constructed to attract attention: like most southron-style garments, it leaves the shoulders and the neck bare, and Joanna wonders, in spite of herself, how the King might react to see her in it.
Joanna beholds herself in the mirror, and imagines Aegon behind her, his fingers brushing against the bare nape of her neck.
The King unexpectedly summons her one day, and Joanna abandons her training of the younger folk to follow the Kingsguard up to the quarters Sansa reserved for the King’s visit. Though she feels some trepidation at first, the Kingsguard delivers her not to a bedroom, or an intimate study, but to one of the smaller libraries of the keep. Even though it’s spring, Aegon keeps the fires lit, and when she enters, he raises his silver head from the careful penning of a letter.
His eyes brighten at the sight of her, and this makes her happy, too. The Kingsguard remains stationed by the open doorway, but there’s enough space that they can speak freely, and when she sits, Aegon dares to stretch a hand out over the table, inviting her to lay her fingers into his palm. He is so earnest with it that Joanna can do nothing but obey, and this simple gesture makes a rueful smile flash across his face.
“You look well,” he says. “Thank you for coming.”
“This is very civilised,” she replies, “compared to your custom of accosting me whenever fancy strikes.”
Aegon just smiles. “I can accost you later,” he replies, “if that is what you wish.” His voice dips. It sends heat skittering into her core, and Joanna has to pretend she’s unaffected.
“Why don’t you tell me what you want now,” she mutters, “and we’ll see about later.”
Aegon gives a squeeze of her hand, then pulls back entirely to rifle through a stack of documents he’s got on the table next to him. Joanna watches a silvery strand of hair fall into his eyes, and the way he subconsciously puffs it away in annoyance. It’s very charming, especially since he’s unaware of it. His lips twist with satisfaction as he finds what he’s looking for, and Aegon slaps a page down between them.
He doesn’t let her have it right away. He keeps it there, catches her gaze, and turns serious.
“Joanna,” King Aegon says, and she feels the distinction is important now. “I’ve spoken to you of a document from Oldtown, if you’ll recall.”
Her mouth goes dry. “Yes,” Joanna replies. “I remember.”
Aegon licks his lips and glances down. “Here I have a record attesting to the marriage between Lady Lyanna Stark and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen,” Aegon continues. “It rightfully belongs to you.”
Joanna glances down. Aegon retreats, but keeps his sharp-eyed focus on her as she lifts the record and scans the page. It’s clear as day, and there can be no denying it: the truth of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark’s marriage is not a matter of conspiracy, but of fact, written into record by the septon who married them.
And yet this can mean nothing at all for her, because there is no equal record of her birth. It is a fact known by Sansa and Aegon and Daenerys, confirmed only by Rhaegal. She can take Aegon’s offering and keep it for herself, and tuck away her wings and cherish in her wolfsblood.
Joanna lifts her head. “Why?” she demands.
“You are who you are,” Aegon tells her, “just as I am.”
“A bastard cannot be Queen.”
Aegon’s lips curl. “A bastard can be whatever she likes,” he replies, “and the White Wolf is proof of it. I will not be the one to slice your wings mid-flight. That is not what I want from you, Joanna.”
Her lips quiver. “Then what do you want from me, Aegon?”
Aegon. This is the first time she speaks his name. The vowels twist strangely in her mouth, and he breathes deeply at the sound. “I want you,” he replies simply, “mind, body, and soul. Whether the world knows it or not, you are a dragon: you belong with greatness.” A pause. “With me.”
Dragons dance freely in the air, tails and teeth and fire chained behind cages made of teeth. Her brother no longer has wings, but he yearns to touch the clouds with her. Joanna’s own wings are new, and they demand she leaves her wolfsteeth behind.
Or do they?
“Queen Visenya Targaryen was a warrior,” Joanna says. Aegon leans back in his seat; his throat bobs as he swallows, and his eyes darken as she speaks. “She flew atop Vhagar with a blade made of Valyrian steel and conquered her husband’s enemies.”
“Is that who you want to be?” Aegon asks, steepling his fingers over his stomach. He listens to her so intently she might as well be speaking gospel.
Joanna does not want to be a tool for him. She wants to fly high enough to taste frost in the atmosphere and be free enough to keep her own legend.
“No,” she replies. “I want to be Joanna.”
Aegon’s cheeks dimple unexpectedly. This is not a trait they share, she realises: it must be from the Dornish side, his mother’s side. If she is a winter wolf, then he is the summer sun, and this dance between them is nothing but a prelude to spring, then autumn, then spring again.
Sometimes, he will reign. Other times, it will be her turn.
Such is nature.
The realisation makes her insides twist with want. Aegon doesn’t realise something has shifted, because he speaks to her as if she still needs convincing.
“And what does Joanna want to be?”
Joanna rises slowly from her seat, hand splayed over the table as she circles her way to him. Aegon is caught, enraptured by her approach, surprised into a frenzied sort of stillness as she swings a leg over his and settles into his lap. Her hands reach for his lapels. There’s a barely-there shake in her fingers that betrays her nervousness, but Aegon doesn’t notice. His eyes flit all over her face, trying to determine her truth. As if, if he were to look deep enough, he might see beneath the flutter of her eyelashes and into the depth of her meaning.
Joanna swallows thickly. “I want,” she says quietly. Aegon waits for a moment, but when it dawns on him that no other demand follows, he brings his hands to her hips and slides them up to her waist, slowly tracing the lines of her body as if he can’t quite believe he has been granted this luxury. She lets him map her contours, lets him push beneath her shirt to touch bare skin. His palms leave a searing trace across her abdomen, and the feeling makes her buck gently into his lap with a long, soft sigh.
One of his hands leaves her waist and cradles her cheek, maneuvering her head so that her eyes meet his head-on. “All that’s best in dark and night,” Aegon mutters wondrously, “meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
She did not imagine him a poet, Joanna thinks, but the intensity of him makes her toes curl and her insides clench. They meet breathlessly in the middle, a messy clash of teeth and tongues, and Aegon’s fingers curl in her hair and trace her spine. She holds onto his shoulders for stability; he is a rock and she is adrift at sea. She finds a twin in the rabbit-quick beat of his heart, echoing her own, and though she burns and yearns and wants, Aegon does not hurry. The King lavishes her with lengthy kisses and soft caresses that make her squirm in his lap, but he does not try to push their embrace along, no matter how hard Joanna grinds herself into him. It is not that he is unaffected — his cock is hard and hot beneath his clothes and feels incredible as she runs herself up and down its length, and there’s a charming flush to his cheeks and a pant to his breath that lets her know that when he does take her, he will —
If she thinks of it, she will go mad.
“Please, Aegon,” Joanna pants softly in his ear, and is rewarded with a low groan. “Please, I…”
He turns his head and captures her lips. She keens and tries to grind herself on him again, but Aegon stills her hips and softens his kiss. “Not yet,” he murmurs, eyes black with want. “Not — fuck. Joanna —”
Her heart hammers in her chest, and she bows over him to rest her forehead on his shoulder. Aegon runs his palms over her shirt and flat across her back, sitting still as he tries to calm his errant breaths. “I want to marry you,” he tells her, tilting his head against hers. “Please. Please be my wife.”
The King sounds desperate. Daenerys said Aegon knows her in his heart, and has known her since before he came to Winterfell. Joanna understands this now, for she feels the way he breathes her in with the need to keep alight.
“Bring me before the Old Gods,” she replies to him, “and my answer will be yes.”
The night sky is clear and dotted with stars, but they shine brightest in Sansa’s eyes as she fixes the white fur that covers the pale expanse of Joanna’s neck and shoulders. They both pretend there are no tears in Sansa’s eyes, but it’s hard to ignore the emotion in her voice.
“Father would have loved to see you like this,” Sansa says. “He loved you very much.”
It’s all Joanna can do to fight against a sudden overwhelm of feeling, but she feels it in her chest. Eddard Stark was a good father to her, and she will miss him every day. He lives in Sansa, though, hidden in the depths of her: no one but Eddard Stark would have given her free reign to marry, and Joanna sees his shadow now in the planes of her cousin’s face. She is glad there are no Targaryen males other than the groom to escort her before the Gods, because Sansa more than suffices, and Joanna wouldn’t want it any other way.
Sansa spares a moment to compose herself, and lifts the lantern that lights their way. Their footsteps trace a path through the snow as they approach the weirwood; it is an intimate scene, reserved for the Kingsguard and the Stark household, and the silence that greets them feels weighty. Aegon stands tall beneath the weirwood tree, dressed in Targaryen colours and wearing the Conqueror’s crown. He wears a thick black cloak, and Joanna knows it beholds the sigil of House Targaryen, but it is his eyes Joanna looks for: the lilac is warmed orange by the firelight, and she wonders what he sees in hers.
The Realm’s wars have sent the Realm’s men to their graves, so Daenerys has the honour of officiating. Tradition wise, this is a queer wedding: women should not officiate, nor should they lead the bride, but needs-must, and besides — Targaryen customs do not fit neatly in northern customs.
“Who comes before the Old Gods this night?” Daenerys calls, lifting her lantern.
Sansa responds, doing the same. “Joanna,” she begins, “of House Targaryen, comes here to be wed. A woman grown, trueborn and noble, she comes to beg the blessings of the Gods.” Her voice cracks, but only a little. “Who comes to claim her?”
Aegon steps forward. The rubies of his crown catch the light as he declares himself. “Aegon, of House Targaryen, sixth of my name.” His voice is clear and firm, and he does not take his gaze off her. “King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. Who gives her?”
“Sansa, of House Stark, trueborn daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, uncle of the bride.”
Then Sansa steps out of the way, and Joanna faces Aegon. The wind is soft as it swirls through the clearing, and Joanna cannot help but think it brings with it the blessings they seek.
Daenerys speaks. “Lady Joanna. Do you take this man?”
Aegon is entranced by her, and she by him.
“I take this man,” Joanna agrees. Aegon breathes a soft, nearly imperceptible sigh as tension she didn’t realise he held bleeds out of his shoulders, and he takes her hand in his. His skin is dry and warm, and together they kneel before the heart tree.
As the clearing falls into silent prayer, Aegon turns to her.
His bejewelled eyes carry with them an eternal promise, and Joanna knows that together they will fly.
The sounds of revelry fade as Aegon shuts the door behind him, and Joanna watches his candlelit form with bated breath: he lingers there, tall and wide-shouldered and narrow-waisted, and his gaze flits from the planes of her face to the column of her throat and down to her sculpted shoulders. There’s a shine to his eyes, part-drink part-danger, and it makes her instincts stutter and her heart race. She wants to look away, but this would be a fool’s bargain: she is not prey to run away, but a predator like Aegon, and she, too, is hungry.
There is no time for patience or slow going. Her hands reach for his doublet as his clamp over her face, and their lips slot together wetly and messily. Their teeth clash: his nails scratch her scalp as he runs his fingers through her hair, and she struggles with the clasps of his clothes in her desperate attempt to get them off him.
Aegon has a different idea. He gathers her hair in one hand and pulls, baring her neck as the other hand curls around her waist to press her tightly against him.
“This damned gown,” he mutters into her skin, “has been driving me to madness.”
His breath tickles her sensitive throat, and Joanna shivers as his voice sends a jolt of arousal between her legs. She’s been waiting too long for this; she has ached for the entirety of the wedding feast, forced to sit next to her husband and do nothing as his gaze darkened with every sip of his wine. Now that he can have his way with her, Aegon wastes time speaking platitudes into her skin, when he should be claiming.
“Take it off me, then,” Joanna challenges him, taking advantage of the forced tilt of her head to reach for his ears with a playful bite. Aegon groans, but doesn’t require any other invitation: he twists her around and bends her down over the bed, pulling hard at the gown’s fastenings until they break and she is left bare backed. Her cheek presses into the bed as he runs his palm over her spine, and then she feels the warm wetness of his tongue as he licks a path all the way up to the nape of her neck. Her groan is lost in the bedding, and Aegon chuckles, giving her neck a quick, sucking bite that sends shockwaves through her body.
“I have dreamt of you,” he tells her, bringing his face to hers to plaster kisses all over the side of her face. “Thought about how I’d take you. There is no limit to what I want to do to you, Joanna. You shall not sleep tonight.”
Joanna smiles. “I don’t believe you,” she pants, buttocks lifted as she desperately seeks his touch, like a bitch in heat. Aegon’s gaze darkens, pupils blown wide, and he disappears from her view. His hands brush back down over her back, and then they hook into the fabric of her dress, and he pulls it off roughly. She’s sure the thing is ripped to shreds, but it doesn’t matter. The air is cold, and she is heated, and Aegon makes sure to keep her warm as he pushes her up on all fours over the bed, parts her cheeks, and then licks a long, unbroken line across her sex. Joanna gasps in surprise, falling to her forearms as Aegon lifts himself to curl an arm around her, fingers pressing the apex of her mound, and the sensation sends starlight shooting all the way down to her toes.
“I’m going to make you scream,” Aegon promises placidly as he gently pets the crown of her head. His fingers keep at it, and she can do nothing but look back at him as he towers over her, fully dressed. “Is that something you want?”
Fuck. Her eyes roll in the back of her head and she nods breathlessly, and Aegon smiles the same dimpled smile that made her give in in the first place. Then he is gone, and with him his fingers, and Joanna is suddenly left cold. This is a shock to the senses, and she turns, chasing him with her gaze. Before she can find him again, Aegon’s palms hook around her ankles, twisting her to her back and pulling her to the edge of the bed. He’s removed his shirt, his chest and shoulders a wide expanse of skin and muscle; he is taut as a bowstring as he looms over her and presses his strained breeches into her sex. She leaves wetness on the cloth, but Aegon doesn’t care, rolling his hips into hers as he bows over her to give her a kiss that’s almost too gentle for the ardour in his gaze.
Their lips slide together, and it serves to calm her down. Her attention lingers on the way his tongue feels against hers, on the brush of his callused hands across the skin of her thighs and legs as he bends them over his shoulders, and on the hard expanse of his clothed cock as he presses it into her sex. The movement draws pleasure out of her and makes it skitter deep into her gut; she is primed, ready to gush.
Aegon doesn’t let her. He lets go of her lips and keeps his gaze over her as a smirk graces his face, and he trails it down to her chest, peppers kisses around her breasts and tests her nipples with his teeth, and then he keeps going, past her ribs and her stomach and her bellybutton until the King kneels before her, head bracketed by her thighs, eyes on the glistening prize. And when he fastens his lips over the apex of her mound and sucks, Joanna cries, head falling back into the mattress.
She cannot think any longer. Aegon is attentive; he shifts between sucking and soothing and licking; one of his palms presses across her lower stomach, and it feels like he is working her from two ends: he sparks lightning with his mouth, and ushers urgency from her womb, and it all feels like she grows tighter and tighter with each motion. Her cries bounce over the walls; she’s not quite wailing yet, but Joanna’s lost control of her voice. When she gathers enough presence of mind to lift herself on a forearm and glance at her kingly husband, she finds that his gaze is already set to hers.
He’s got his gods-damned tongue inside her gods-damned body, and now he has the gall to smirk. The sight is as infuriating as it is appealing, and Joanna falls back again, arching her back beneath his ministrations. A finger chases after his tongue, and Aegon slides into her without barrier or obstacle. Now that she has something to squeeze, the sparks of energy start manifesting into spasms. Her ears ring as she grinds herself against Aegon’s face with reckless abandon, and Aegon presses even harder on her stomach. His fingers piston in and out of her, and she vaguely has the sense to hear her sex squelch as Aegon works. He lifts his head and replaces his tongue with a thumb and keeps fucking her with two of his fingers. “That’s right,” he cajoles sweetly, “you’re so good, my love.”
The words draw her attention. Aegon’s mouth glistens with her slick, and the sight is so obscene she cries out, back arching against the bed as she feels herself tightening around his fingers. He keeps crooning as she grows mad beneath his touch, insistent with his thumb as her thighs tighten around his arm in a vice-grip. The pleasure-point reaches new heights, and suddenly the cord snaps. Joanna gasps through it as her heart beats out of her chest, and her husband watches as she rides the waves of pleasure.
The world… disappears for a moment. Her eyes are open, but there’s really not much else to notice other than the way her limbs all heap with a sense of utter abandon. Aegon pulls his fingers out of her and parts her knees with a featherlight touch: he presses a kiss to her sex as Joanna breathes through the aftermath, and then kisses all the way up from her inner thigh to the inside of her knee. By the time she comes back to reality, she finds Aegon naked, watching her with hooded, lustful eyes.
His cock, long and curved, sits up against his stomach.
The sight stirs more heat into her gut. She looks up at him again, and Aegon leaves another kiss into the inside of her leg. His hair is mussed, silver strands glowing in the firelight, and his lips are slick and wet. When he realises she has returned amongst the living, he drops her leg and slides his way up her body. He presses a kiss in the valley of her breasts, and she sighs, running her fingers through his hair.
“When I was a boy,” he whispers in her skin, “a wisewoman told me that the Targaryen crown holds space for three jewels. Mine would be the ruby. My aunt’s, the opal. But the third was not yet known: only that its mold was the same as mine. She said —”
Aegon lifts his gaze and catches hers. The intensity of his gaze sends a frisson through her limbs. He looks deathly serious as he speaks, sliding further up her body until his forearms bracket her head. “ — she said that should I want to find the missing piece,” Aegon says, “I should search for a mirror, lost in the snow.”
Joanna’s heart is in her throat as Aegon slowly slides his cock across her sex. He sighs, dipping to capture her lips in his, before pulling back. “You are my mirror,” Aegon tells her with all the sobriety of a man-made prophet, “cast in dragonglass. My equal in blood.”
Joanna doesn’t even think. “Your sister.”
“Yes,” Aegon replies unblinkingly. “My sister.” He leans in again and kisses her, long and deep. He slowly sheathes his cock inside her and Joanna keens at the intrusion. She has no maidenhead to speak of, but she is a maiden, and Aegon is thick and hard and long and does not want her to hurt. He bottoms out and stills, cockhead reaching for her womb as he presses kisses over her face and jaw and neck and waits until her body relaxes. Joanna opens her eyes to find him staring at her, and thinks that Aegon is hers, mind, body, and soul. From the beginning, his has been a crusade to capture her heart, and now her body responds, warming to him as he starts to tentatively rock inside the cradle of her hips. His cockhead touches something sensitive inside her and Joanna gasps with every thrust.
“I am going to fill you full of seed,” Aegon promises her, leaning his weight on one of his arms as the other reaches for her thigh to hook her leg around his waist. This makes him reach even deeper inside, and Joanna rolls her head back, mouth agape, as Aegon quickens his pace. “And I am going to keep doing that —“ a vicious snap of his hips, “— over and over again, for the rest of our lives, that you will never have cause to mourn what came before.”
“Aegon,” Joanna keens, eyes open wide as she watches the place where they connect. She is wet enough that Aegon slides without issue, and beyond their gasps and grunts there is the slick sound of slapping flesh. Aegon grows focused, his eyebrows furrowed in the middle as he presses impossibly deeper inside her, sending shockwaves through her core, and Joanna’s eyes roll back in her head as she grapples uselessly at his shoulders. “Aegon —!”
“Tell me what you want,” Aegon grunts, keeping up his rhythmic thrusts. She flounders, and he dips to her to lick at her mouth and bite at her throat. She clenches around him, and he swears — a mess of Valyrian words she doesn’t understand — and bows over her as his thrusts slow. “Tell me. I want to hear you take your pleasure from me, sister.”
This is not normal, she thinks, but this is what she wants. He is messy and filthy and she wants to dance in this filth until she dies. “I want it faster,” Joanna begs, clutching at the sides of his head so she can press their lips together. “Please, Aegon. Break my fucking bed.”
He breaks their kiss to swear again, and then swiftly rises to his knees to gather her legs to her chest and press himself over them. Aegon reenters her with a vengeance, and the new position gives him access and freedom to slam himself in and out of her. The pleasure sears its way into a crescendo and Joanna claws at the bedding as her head turns from side to side, neck tense and aching from the way she grits her teeth. Aegon pistons in and out of her ceaselessly, teeth bared, eyes wild and hair disheveled, and watches her gasp and keen with every snap of hips.
Completion arrives more abruptly than before: Joanna’s eyes suddenly fly wide as her insides catch on Aegon’s cock and pulse and flutter around it. Aegon hisses and stills as Joanna spasms beneath him, back arching as her legs part to release some of the pressure. Aegon falls to his arms above her and pumps inside her for a few more seconds, before he, too, tenses with his back arched and hips pressed against hers.
It takes longer for Joanna to descend from the heavens the second time around, and Aegon lets her take her time. He softens inside her as he drops to his forearms and then his side, and pulls her into his embrace as they catch their breaths and return to norm. Her husband’s skin feels sticky against hers, but he runs hot and the room is chilly, so she presses herself as close to him as she can as the aftershocks of pleasure rumble through her body.
Aegon breathes deep as he looks up at the ceiling, and when his strain abates, he sighs heavily, curling his arms around her to tighten his embrace.
“That is all to say,” he mutters in her temple, “that I have coveted you for as long as I can remember.”
Sleep threatens to take her, and Joanna doesn’t want to open her eyes. “Covet me some more,” she mumbles. “For I will not be kept.”
Aegon huffs and says something about her spirit, but Joanna is already asleep, chasing clouds up in her dreams.