Archive of Our Own

The blow of the lance is delivered with all the fury of the old gods, struck true in its aim. It rattles you with its brute strength, braced by the power of his arm. Striking your head as a hammer would.

The impact blinds you, vision blanketed by white. And it thrums through the polished iron of your helmet, bleeding past the armor to tremble through your marrow and teeth in a painful torrent, burning as a poison in your veins. Searing, savage, disorienting as it shatters through you. 

And it all rides on a blur of events. 

The lance springing up high, it's coronel winking like a promise in the dim sunlight before it made contact, the impact, your head lurching back with all the weight of a stone plummeting from a cliffside. 

Something in your neck makes a terrible noise. A raw, violent snap just as the blood rushes your ears in a heavy, deafening roar and the cheers from the crowd are but a muted squall. Dull beneath the shrill ringing that's currently tearing its way through your ear canals, rattling deep inside the depths of your skull. 

You taste iron on your tongue, and your eyes catch sight of blue through the narrow sliver in your helmet, mottled with dreary grey, dappled like bruises. 

The sky, you realize sluggishly. You're looking up at the sky. 

The panic of that realization brings you back to yourself. In a blink, you are made too aware of the world around you. The agony ravaging its way up your neck, slicing across your shoulders like talons.

Your hands and feet feel miles apart from the rest of you, strung out far, numb and tingling, your spine a hot poker in your back. But you aren't allotted a second to get your bearings. In a rush, sound barrages you in a cacophony, wild, feral screams from the people in the stands. Demanding for more. More ferocity, more violence. 

And you'll be happy to give it to them as soon as you're able to properly lift yourself. 

It's with a great relief that you notice that you haven't been dismounted. You can feel your horse beneath you still, moving unsteadily, shifting on her great legs as though she's been enraged and can't be bothered to quiet herself. You're leaned back awkwardly in the saddle, your lower spine crudely arched over the rigid lip of the cantle, and if it weren't for your armor, you're certain that it would have left a bruise. If not broken you. 

You hardly register that there are hands on you, the sensations of them lost, reduced to a vague impression through the barrier of metal and padding that cocoons your body. But you can tell that they are doing their best to lift you, making to correct you within the cradle of your saddle so that you may sit upright. 

A gasp leaves you, pained and clipped through the wince pinching your jaw shut, but you ignore the ache in your muscles. Fighting past it to move yourself upward. Gripping blindly for the support of your squire's shoulder as he aids in righting you. Blinking repeatedly as though it might rebuke the stars blotting your vision. 

"Gods, he strikes like a fucking bull," you remark freely, without having to worry about your voice being spied while underneath the cover of the gleeful racket. The screaming and praise made by the spectators.

You aren't entirely sure if the comment was made from awe or rage. Perhaps both. Maybe that's what he deserves. You have only been struck by few other knights, your experience still little, but the power he carries through in his arm is one that you know you will not soon forget. 

"And that surprises you, my lord?" Comes Elric's reply, always careful, even in now, where the atmosphere is alive with an audible pandemonium. A proper cover for whatever conversation may extend between you, but he remains vigilant. Cautious to use the title of your hoaxed lordship no matter what. He's never the type to let a secret slip, and that is why he is your favorite squire.

Well, he's your only one, but that matters little. 

But the sardonic bite in his tone could have been abandoned. Your pride is already wounded enough. Left broken and strung out across the damp, ruined earth; laid across the arena as a spectacle. Something to be laughed at.

You can hear the Targaryen zealots in the crowd jeering. Though their numbers are few here, the passion they hold for the House is devout. Fearsome. 

"Are you alright?" He questions, a true display of worry. His hands reaching to support the base of your spine. "He's struck your helm, my lord. He's earned two points from just that. Are you certain you can continue?" 

You can't help but to glare at him from the corner of your vision, though you know that he is unable to see it, the sight of your helmet too narrow. But even if he were able, you know that he wouldn't notice. Too busy fussing over you, eyeing you as though you were as delicate as porcelain, lined with fine fissures. Ready to break. Female. His hands cradling your shape as though you might shatter otherwise, all while you will yourself to sit upright, fighting against the drag of your armor, the sting lashing through your neck and back. 

"I am fine." You assure through clenched teeth, trapping a groan behind the bite of them while you shift yourself in your saddle, securing your feet further within the cradle of your stirrups from where they had slipped.

You don't have to spare him another glance to know that he is unconvinced. But you can't be bothered to pay his concern any mind. Your attention has narrowed, transformed into a fine point around your rival, already waiting at the opposite end of the field. Standing vigil like a herald of death. Figure made dark from the thin fog that's settled over the meadow; the weak glimpses of light peeking through the cloud cover catching on the dramatic edges of his armor. Glittering against the black. Fire on scales. 

It turns your blood molten to see him there, sitting proudly on his mount, the visor of his bestial helmet pulled up to bare his face. Forcing you to witness the gleeful expression that rests upon it.

Despite the distance between you, you can see it clearly, the smile on his lips. Languid, pleased. Gloating. Clearly, he's managed to stroke his own ego. A perfect vessel of pure Targaryen arrogance. 

He's visibly reveling in the harm he's brought down upon you, the agony he's wrought by his lance. The hit seemed to have been a response to your first round, where you had both managed to deliver equal blows to each other's chests. He must have took to the tie in points as a personal affront, and his form of justice was to attempt to behead you by lance. 

His head swivels, straying from you long enough to pay his attention to the pavilion overlooking the lists. Checking to see if his family is still watching alongside the other nobles, and he visibly preens when Prince Maekar acknowledges him from the comforts of his seat with a weary tilt of his head. Expression grim, the lines on his face heavy. But Prince Aerion seems unbothered by his father's austere demeanor, posturing like a peafowl fanning its feathers. Exuding nothing but ego. 

You long for nothing more than to rip out his throat. To taste the metallic victory of his blood on your tongue. 

But unfortunately for you, you'll have to settle for less. 

You no longer want for triumph by lance; the pain makes you forget it. Now you only want him to hurt in a measure that equals you own. You want him to grimace with the agony. For his breath to hitch each time he takes a step. For his lungs to smart and his ribs to ache with every strained gasp. 

Your eyes scan down the length of his body, studying the layering and fit of his armor, how it adorns him. Custom made and meticulously crafted, no doubt by the seasoned hands of a person who's dedicated their entire life to their profession.

And they have done well. More than well. It's beautiful work. Steel fashioned into streamline borders, sharp edges, lethal spikes. All seamlessly forged with the intention of displaying Targaryen wealth, but most importantly, to protect the prince that wears it. 

But there isn't a single suit of armor that is without its flaws. Weakened chainmail, worn gambeson, turned ragged from overuse, a gap between the plates.

You cannot strike him below the waist. You'd find yourself under immediate disqualification, your false name tarnished. All of the effort and time you have spent to build your reputation reduced to dirt, trampled underfoot. Made a besmirched knight. Shamed.

And then you will have nothing left. Nothing for yourself to claim. Diminished once again to only to gossip and luncheons. Pursuits more suitable for a woman. The finery of embroidery and hours spent plucking at the strings of a harp so that you might one day charm a suitor. 

You will not ruin all of your efforts so foolishly, but you will show him the humiliation of pain. 

And your shot to do so is there, in a fine gap made between the breastplate and pauldron. The darkened steel giving to expose the fabric of the gambeson underneath. The material vibrant, a rich red. The color of the muscles that lies beneath his own flesh, the same shade as his blood. 

Your window to strike him there will be slim. The unprotected under armor is there between the junction of his shoulder and arm. The very arm that he will use to hit you with his lance, and as soon as he thrusts it forward, the angle will have the plates of armor closing. Overlapping over each other and sheltering the glimpse of fabric from any possible blows. 

You won't be afforded the time to get your bearings, to properly calculate your aim with painstaking focus. It will have to be quick. Fluid like a serpent's strike, unwavering, confident. Lacking a shred of hesitation. 

If he were a more reputable foe, perhaps you would feel guilty for using such a tactic. If he were a man of moral worth, you might not even consider it.

But Aerion Targaryen is nothing of the sort. He's pathetic. Hiding behind the protection of his house while he employs petty tactics and cheap shots to get the upper hand on his opponents. Never exercising restraint, always going for the killing blow. An embarrassment on the Targaryen name. A raving madman who rants of being a dragon. Delusional and cruel. 

You would be doing the realm a favor by making him bleed. 

"Hand me another lance," you order, low enough to remain hidden but so firm that Elric could hear you. Your tone renouncing any possible intentions to argue. Not that he would. 

You secure the grip you have on your reins in your left hand, fingers tightening around the thick leather leads as best as you can through your glove, squeezing until it creaks softly beneath the pressure. You settle your hips, shifting them to plant a better seat, holding yourself steady while you extend an arm, fingers splayed open expectantly. 

His footsteps patter away from you momentarily, slick from the mud. But you don't have to wait for his return for long. He's swift on his feet, even while bogged down by the added weight, and in hardly any time at all, a new lance is placed within your grip.

You don't hesitate to seize it. 

You catch the excitement that sparks in Prince Aerion's eyes at the sight of it. A fervent glint, but his expression hardens into something grimmer. The purse of his lips flattening, brows pinching close.

And then he's reaching up for his visor, steel-taloned fingers bringing it down over his face with a pronounced jerk as though you've both wronged and thrilled him in a single breath. And now, you are no longer looking at pallid skin and a sharp stare, but the countenance befitting a devil. Hollowed eye sockets, skeletal and gaunt. 

As though adopting your energy for her own, your horse shifts beneath you, her hooves striking at the wet soil as though she is prepared to break into a rage. Her head jerks up, the armor settled across her dark body rattles lowly in metallic hisses. Even through the thick of the saddle, you can feel the anticipation that has coiled through her. Her muscles bunched tight, her hindquarters and shoulders bracing to lunge. 

Prince Aerion's own steed seems just as restless, fighting against the bit, eager like a hound who has smelt gore and longs for more of it. 

The exhilaration is palpable across the atmosphere, sticking to your armor like the very moisture that's turning the breeze heavy. Thick and pulsing, vibrating above your skin. Trapped there directly between your armor. Forced to seep past the barrier of your flesh, infectious. 

You lick at your lips, tasting the blood that has trickled down from your nose and smeared around the seam of your mouth, iron dancing upon your tongue. You think that the taste of it may only excite you more. 

You lift up your shield and your lance, the point of it raised to the heavens. There was a time where you could hardly hold it for longer than a few measly seconds. Your body would betray you, the muscles in your arm giving, overcome with tremors from its great weight.

You were a fragile thing then. Made flowery from your days spent learning how to engage yourself in proper society, sparing with wooden swords, not yet strong enough to endure the heft of armor, the strain of it. But now you hold your lance with pride. With strength. 

You can no longer make out Prince Aerion's eyes, obscured by his helm. He cannot see yours. And yet you know that your gazes have met. Seized in place like eagles with their talons locked together. Tussling, pulling, determined to force the other to the ground they hurtle towards, marking each other for death. 

You're delighted to see who would splatter upon the earth first. 

Air huffs from your mare's great lungs, her chest swelling with every heave, her ears swiveling back, listening to the way you have gone silent in patience for the signal. You spare her murmured praise, spoken out on a hushed breath. 

You and Aerion observe the other from across the lists. Silence, time stretching out between you, vast, reaching wide like a maw hinging open. A pit that expands, teeth rising up, closing in until you both are swallowed as a pair. The only beings that exist. The crowd, the nobles watching from the pavilion vanish, a swell of colors and sound made diluted until it all fades into obscurity. Fed to oblivion. 

And then the trumpet sounds. 

You thrust your hips forward in the saddle, a cry spilling from your lips, and your mount lurches forward into the fray with a practiced speed.

In the same span, Aerion's own stallion launches into a powerful stride, outpacing your mare by only the passing of a single second. 

Your lance lowers, crossing high over the length of your steed's neck like an extension of your arm. You will your grasp to turn to iron, fingers flexed tight around its width, holding it firm even while her stride attempts to jostle it free, fighting against you with each one of her frantic steps. But you keep it leveled and tight towards the side of your chest, just as you've been taught. Just as you've done many times before. 

The limited view of the world you have through your peripheral vision blurs, made murky around the edges in an unstable vignette until all that is clear is your target. His horse charges towards you, a blaze of white adorned in black, Aerion astride like death coming to collect. His own arm raised, primed to draw back with the delivery of a fatal blow, lance leveled high, the blunt metal at its point glinting dully with the promise of more pain. 

You both draw closer, fated to meet in the clash of steel and splintering wood, and the crowd holds their breath while they await it. 

Your vision fastens onto him, the fine concentration of a predator poising itself to attack. And then he does it, the action timed well with your approaching proximity, his arm pulling back. The plates in his armor parts, obsidian steel separating, revealing the tender red padding hidden underneath. 

You don't hesitate. You strike. 

All of your rage carries through your arm, providing it with strength, heat lashing through your veins, invigorating you. The agony in your neck swells and burns violently but you ignore it. The sting of it a secondary thing, insignificant compared to the scale of righting a wrong.

You aim, not to win against him, but to make him reel from the drive of your lance. Skin bruised and aching. A reminder that it had been you who had done it to him. The faceless knight, the one who drifts about in the shadows like a ghost, was the one that had left a mark on him. Blemished the dragon prince. Hit him as though he were any mortal man. 

You catch his eyes through the sockets of his visor just as your mounts begin to pass each other, a faint glimpse of violet and azure, pinned onto you with an intensity that's flaying. You could swear that it almost made you stuck in place. Lodged in time. But even then, it wasn't enough to distract you from your goal. 

You collide together.

Your lance reaches its target with a precision that you didn't entirely believe you had, the coronel driving into his shoulder with all the weight of your body led through the thrust. Digging in brutally, lodged directly between the plates of his armor. Chainmail lies beneath the cushion of the fabric, but still you feel it give, pressing mercilessly into his flesh and the vigor behind your strike makes him jerk, an animal flailing in a trap. 

Though your achievement comes at a cost. Just as you hit him, his own lance grazes you. Not your head again, not your chest, but your throat, his aim knocked askew only by the success of yours.

He truly only nicks you, but the sheer force deployed by the strength in his arm is enough that even just that is enough to have pain flaring where it missed. White-hot. Near crippling. For a moment too long, your throat seizes around a breath, constricting tight like it's forgotten how to function. 

You almost lose yourself to animal fear, heart fluttering in your chest, but then the sound of his own cry pierces the air. Startled, wounded. Surprised from a hit that he never expected to land. And that is enough. 

You almost laugh because of it, but all that you manage is a horrible, choked noise. Terribly ugly, and your throat aches, even with the armor around your neck having taken on the majority of the blow. 

Just as quickly as you met, you're both carried past each other on the backs of your horses, their hoofbeats thundering. The crowd erupts into another bout of screaming. Voices chanting, cresting high with praise and joy.

You keep choking on your laughter, a demented noise like some sort of crazed wild dog. And you barely have half a mind to guide your mount to a stop once you reach the other end of the field. She swings her head with an animated shake, twisting on her hooves as you guide her to turn around while you force your lungs to expand, sucking air in despite the sting that hasn't even begun to ebb. 

When your sights land on Prince Aerion, your delight only grows, spreading far beyond the reaches of your chest until it pours into your fingertips and toes.

He lost his lance after he clipped you. Abandoned it in the center of the lists, forgotten in the mud, the same as when you had lost your own the round prior, forced from your grip by the strike to your head.

On the far end of it, his horse is antsy, prancing in place and there is Aerion, posture straight in the saddle, but he's clearly favoring his right shoulder. Exactly where you stuck him. Looking every bit like a downed bird, or better yet, a crippled dragon.

His head is hung low, but he's watching you, you know it. 

He has won, his points greater than yours, and yet he cannot relish in his victory. He is not urging his horse forward to prance it about, brandishing a fist in the air as a victor. He's watching you; a stare that's scathing. 

And because of that, it is difficult for you to feel at all like the loser. 

The bystanders continue their applaud, others taunt and hoot, angered by his win or your loss. Some no doubt having made bets and wagers on the victor of this joust, and now they will have no choice but to pay their dues. 

You hold his gaze for one final moment, trapping it with your own, remaining unbent underneath the scope of his observations. You remain that way, evaluating the other. Waiting for each other to flinch, to give. And only once you are satisfied do you turn your mount. Clicking your tongue to the roof of your mouth, directing her out past the perimeter of the arena.

When Elric rushes to your side, reaching for the low drape of your horse's reins, you allow him to take ahold of them. To lead you far from the chaos of the lists, the madness and enthusiasm bubbling from it in a fervor, until you are long past its fringes and returned to the safety of your private tent. 

Had his father not been watching him, you're positive that Aerion Brightflame would have actually taken your head. 

The night here is a raucous thing. The event bursts across the air in sparks and laughter and flowing wine. The fog from earlier in the day having finally given way. Dismissed by the breeze, balmy with the promise of the oncoming summer and perfumed with the smoke from pyres; stars bright and scattered across the black velvet of the sky.

It's the sort of festivity that your uncle thrives within, and if he were able to be here, you know for certain that he would have already made a display of himself. Always cementing himself as a spectacle by flaring into boisterous folk songs and downing liquor like water. 

You almost anger that you can't be outside to enjoy the fruits of it. The dancing, the jubilation, all of the theatrics that the tournament has to offer. But instead you are here, stowed away in your tent, licking your wounds like a kicked mutt. 

But did you truly have it your way, you wouldn't still be here at all. You would have been long gone while the sun was still high, having made your false appearances as Ser Deitrich of Millbrook; competed in the tourney, made your mark.

You want to leave. In any other circumstance, you would have. You —or Ser Deitrich, rather — have developed a reputation for it. Appearing at events to compete, sporting bronze armor, a helm that resembled a snarling beast, fangs bared, only to vanish after the victor was declared. Remaining long enough only to pay respects as the knight who does not speak so's not to offend any of the nobles.

It was a rigid pattern that you have maintained carefully for the passing of several moons. So much so, that as a knight, you have become something of a specter. Having been likened to a phantom. A ghoul that habituates the tourneys, showing only when it suits them. 

All for the sake of hiding your true identity. A lady. A child of House Baratheon. 

But Elric had all but refused that you endure the journey back home, fretting over your wounds like a nursemaid. 

Once you had been able to shed your armor, the extent of your injuries had been laid bare. You had hardly realized before how much Prince Aerion had ravaged you.

There's a deep tenderness between your breasts, one that throbs when you graze it with your fingertips, made there from the first round of your match, when both of your lances had shattered upon each other's armor.

Your chest plate and the padding beneath absorbed a large sum of the lance's brunt, but that did not mean you left it entirely unscathed. You will be sore with it for days. And the same can be said for your throat.

Miraculously, you think there is no permanent damage, even though you were certain there would have been. 

But nothing compares to what he has done to your face. You hadn't realized it when you were still sporting it, but the blow to your head had dented your helmet in. The crude divot in the metal having split a cut across the bridge of your nose from the impact, and the skin there has swelled, made raw and red. 

It had shocked you when you had caught sight of it in the reflection of the water you had used to clean yourself; the blood turning the contents of the basin blushed with pink.

Hideous thing that it is, despite being small. Small enough that you do not fear that it will scar. If it were not for the need to maintain proper appearances, to keep the unmarred face of a lady, you would perhaps take pride in it. When you saw it, you didn't think of your loss. You were only reminded of how you were the one to make the prince hurt. That even in his victory, he could only look to you. 

But you can't savor your achievement unreservedly. There will be talk of it once you return home. An excuse will have to be made — perhaps you had taken a fall while on horseback, cut your nose upon the ground —to hide the truth of your injury from the other lords and ladies, or else their tongues will wag with speculations.

You've already racked up numerous lies already. Feeble alibis all told from your own mouth, and more notably, your uncle himself, all in a means to protect you. 

But it is hardly a comfort. That only means that it is not just your reputation that is in peril, but his as well. 

And it is that fear that keeps you sheltered here, tucked away within the confines of your tent. If your uncle could see you now, having shunned yourself here like a coward, you know that he would have words. You're sure that he would reprimand you, too jovial for his own good, chiding and encouraging you in his palaverous nature. Urging you to go out into the night. To take celebration in the festivities, the spirits, the exuberance of it all. 

"Fuck the lot of them," you imagine he would say. "Do not let a fear keep you hidden. A Baratheon is not fit to stow themselves away like an exiled leper when there are merrymaking and drink to be had." 

But you cannot. You won't risk it. Not for the sake of hot wine and hog meat. 

You sent Elric out. Ordered him, honestly. He was too much, suffocating, a vice around your throat. Agitated, clucking ceaselessly like a hen. His distress over your state was endearing and sweet, but you couldn't bear it. You needed air, and he needed a distraction, lest he sent himself into madness.

He fought against your word, chin raising as though your dismissal of him were an affront. As though you spat in the face of the universe by attempting to banish him from your tent. 

You aren't sure how long you had both stood, on separate sides of the space, gazes matched. He had that stubborn set in his jaw, eyes narrowed, the soft wrinkles on his forehead creased with the instinct to resist. A stalemate. Both refusing to yield. His lips had parted then, something stupid armed on the tip of his tongue. You had spoken first. 

"Go. " You had decreed, tone turned thin from your vexation. You could sparsely keep yourself from rolling your eyes at him, an irritated huff held in your mouth while you moved to occupy yourself with the bare parchment you left strewn about on a far tabletop. You waved a hand in the air, dismissive. "Drink, dance, start a fight, find a wench to occupy yourself with. I do not care." 

"And what will you do with yourself?" he queried then. Exasperated in his own right. His hair is already going grey. Too early for someone so young, and it is all of his worrying that must be the cause. He does himself no favors by fretting so furiously over you. In his eyes, you're the gentle Baratheon lady who must be protected. 

"That is not to be your concern tonight," you had answered. "Please, don't remain here for my sake. There is a time to be had out there, and I know how much you enjoy your parties. So be gone." 

He fixed you with another look. A warning. "If you so much as poke your head out from this tent— " 

"I will not," you promised. 

More stares were exchanged. He did hesitate, but you saw the very moment his resolve broke. Elric was many things, but a man who could resist the temptation of liquor and dancing, he was not. He belongs to House Baratheon entirely, and its vices are not ones that are easily denied. 

When you watched him leave, you pretended to not be envious. But it stuck under your skin, turned bitter against your teeth. You loathe it. Being contained within these flimsy linen walls, burgundy like a beast's belly. You feel consumed by it. Left to pace about, as restless as an animal held within a cage.

The buzz from the joust still has not left you, a vigor in your veins, as though lightning has been sealed within your body with no way to exit. And the clamor of the festival does nothing to soothe it. It is only more salt in the wound, an awful tease. A banquet that you have not been permitted to lavish in; a hound lead around the vicinity of scraps but unable to indulge, left to struggle against the chain bound to its neck. 

For a moment you actually contemplate renouncing the vow you made to him and sneaking out under the cover of the shadows. Slipping from the back of your tent and vanishing through the distracted throng of bodies to become one with the celebration. You wish to experience it all. The energy of it scattered on your tongue, the pour of honey mead down your throat, to cavort until your limbs ache.

More than they already do. 

But you do not. Instead, you starve yourself of it all, pacing dejectedly as though you were mourning the loss of a lover. Listening, bored and wound tight, while the world moves without you, wild and sybaritic. 

You make to distract yourself with quill and parchment. Drawing, uninspired and rough. You write, though it is mostly nonsense, taking account of the sights you had seen on your travel here, the many animals, the wildflowers. None of which you inclined to care much about in the current moment.

But you will yourself to keep your quill in hand, scrawling ink down with a stubborn determination, intent to distract yourself. From the constant aching in your body, the tenacious sting in your shoulders that strains each time you move, but it is all for naught. It does not fade; you cannot divert your attentions from it. How it coils tight through your body, hot chains that flare and tighten when you shift.  

You need a drink. 

Like a fool you had forbade Elric from searching the tourney grounds for someone who may have been able to provide medical aid. You didn't want the questions, the hassle, or the fear that perhaps, someone just might recognize you.

There would be curiosity, as to why a lady would show up to a great event such as this, a union between a respected lord and his new wife, without paying respects. Without raising the banners of her house or giving tribute. It would be too much, and you are here without proper justification. 

It is these moments that force you to confront the truth of it. You are but a girl, playing dress up. A farce for freedom that has led far out of her depth, close to drowning. 

"If you are the ser everyone is raving about then I can only pray that the realm never sees you to war." 

Your body startles before your mind registers that a stranger has spoken at all. You lurch up from your stool in a wild flail of limbs. Jerking around like a puppet tugged on its strings, spinning on your heels as though you had been stabbed, thoughts scrambled in a panicked flurry.

In a nimble sweep, your eyes take in the entirety of your tent, the empty space, thick cloth walls, flames guttering on their candlesticks, and there, standing before the closed entryway, is a figure. Looming there. More akin to a creature than a man, traced in firelight and the image of it is haunting.

It's wrong. It's terrible because they are not meant to be here. They don't belong, and your instincts scream with it. 

Dangerous eyes glint in the flickering amber, peering through the dim glow and shadows with a focus that arrests you completely. It's meticulous in its regard. Surveying you as though you are not living and breathing, but a thing to be studied. A small animal who's had the misfortune of stumbling before a salivating maw, fatal rows of teeth. 

It prompts your heart to race faster because you know who's watching you. Stirring the patter in your chest, pulse leaping until you feel the thrum of it echoing in your veins. 

Gods, he's not supposed to be here. Not him. Never him. 

Fate has truly frowned upon you on this night. 

"My lord," you greet, feigning a composure that you know must appear feeble. But it cannot be helped. Never in a thousand years could you have foreseen this. Never would you have tortured yourself with the implications of such a thing, though perhaps, you should have. "You surprised me." 

You can't contain the delicate gasp that breaks out from behind the clutch of your ribcage, shaken, brittle around its edges. You've been unsettled in a manner that you've rarely had the trouble of experiencing. Completely unmoored. And you loathe it entirely. How pathetic it makes you feel. The hopelessness of it, the chill it carries as it slips around the stretch of your throat like the cold hand of ruin. 

He did so greatly resemble death earlier today. It seems you had not been wrong in that comparison when you had looked upon his wraith-like helm, because now you are certain that he is here to drag you to your end. 

Prince Aerion does not afford you the relief that might come from his words. He remains silent and it is horrible. He stands in front of the closed flaps of the entrance he had so arrogantly invited himself into, quiet and poised, shoulders postured straight, the pommel of the sword at his side winking in a polished silver. Ever the perfect picture of regality, of that claimed Targaryen excellence.

The candlelight spilling about the confines of the tent only now seem like an awful joke instead of a necessity, the glow of it making him look every bit of the dragon that he often raves to be. 

Low flames brush over the sharp angles of his face, splaying soft shadows across the bridge of his nose, the line of his jaw. The amber gloom of it has his stare almost appearing as a blaze, as though he were lit aflame from within. And he regards you with that blistering fire. Otherworldly violet scrutinizing you in your entirety, not an ounce of you going unwitnessed. 

It is his unabashed inspection that forces you to remember that you are only clad in your shift, the fine linen draped over your body loosely, making you vulnerable and fully indecent to be seen by a man. But in your defense, you were not expecting company. Elric was long gone, and anticipated to be absent until the late dawn, occupied by the comforts of women and liquor. He'll probably wind up spending the night passed out in a ditch, sprawled in a drunken stupor. 

A man welcoming himself into your tent — a prince, no less — was not expected. 

It's instinct to want to shy away from his gaze. It's utterly crude for him to be seeing you in such a state, wholly improper. But you turn your will to steel, keeping your body motionless under his attention, confident and fixed. 

"Is there cause for your intrusion, my lord, or have you only come here to gawk?"

It is uttered with a thinly veiled derision that you almost regret, your spirit seeming to have traded fear for contempt. It makes your tongue loose, your restraint weak, but as much as your own recklessness frightens you, you can't deny that you are angry. Contemptuous that, prince or no, he would invite himself into your space without single warning. A conceited, impertinent man. A bastard, really. 

His chin tucks down towards his chest, and you see his pale brows perk just the slightest as he registers your words, head tilting in consideration. "I came here with the expectation of meeting a knight. To sate my curiosity and speak to the man I bested in the lists today; the one who people talk about like a creature of myth." He shifts, a measured footstep carrying him forward, the movement lazy in its motion, but it only serves to strike you with alarm. "But instead, all I see is one poor mannered girl." 

Accusation sears in his tone, hidden beneath its tranquil glide on the air, a poison laced within a chalice. You need to temper that irritation before it possibly flares. Before you wind up with his blade pierced through your heart. 

A smile lifts at the corners of your lips, polite and charming, just as you had been taught. "Forgive me, my prince. It's only that I was not prepared to entertain a guest, as I'm sure you can tell by my current state of dress." Your hands flourish, gesturing down towards the length of your body, the cream toned fabric that spills down to brush around your knees.

Your attention flickers from him temporarily, as though contrite, scrambling internally for some sort of excuse. "And I regret to inform you that Ser Deitrich is no longer here. You've missed him by several hours." 

It's measly. Dumb to your own ears and you know as soon as you say it, that he does not believe the lie. It's there. Written clearly on his face, the knowing glimmer in his eyes. It's how his focus shifts, slipping away from you for but a moment. And when you track it over to what has garnered his attention, you think a piece of your soul dies, your heart giving right in hollow of your chest.

He's looking at your armor, and you know that you've been damned. 

Your helm is there, sat carefully in the corner, placed upon a stretch of fabric so that it would not touch the ground. The other pieces, the breastplate and the many intricate parts made into a curated pile; shinning bronze, ornamental with its fine engravings. 

Right now, it hardly feels endearing to look at it. The usual rush of pride does not greet you. It has been reduced to a mound of evidence now. Proof of your transgressions. 

His focus pauses there, snagged on the metal, and you see how the information turns over in his head, his mind plucking at threads, twining them together until a tapestry takes the place of chaos. Disbelief projects across his face and then simple understanding. 

"Do you take me for an idiot?" 

It's blunt, his question. Sharp in its delivery. You are torn between wincing out of dread and balling a fist from ire. 

"Why would I think such a thing, my lord?" 

When his gaze pins you again, it does not reach your eyes. It lands somewhere worse. Between them, settling there on the laceration that parts the skin of your nose, angry and red like blood on the hands of a murderer, irrefutable. Another confirmation. Another cut made in the veil of your lie.

You swear his eyes burn. Lit alight with a fervor as though he has become privy to knowledge that he didn't not even consider and now he is delighted with it. 

You are trapped, truly. Tangled within the web of your own ruse and there is no way to tear free from it now. Perhaps this should be where you beg. To get down upon your knees and plead for him to have mercy. That would be the wise thing to do. But the very notion of it boils inside of you. Your very being rejecting it as though it were a sickness, body burning hot with a fever as though it is trying to heat the fright from you, an illness in its own right. You would sooner cleave your own head from your shoulders than plead with a Targaryen.

A pause follows, though it offers no reprieve. It is closer to torture than to comfort. His head lifts, vision narrowing in a probing squint. 

"We've met before." His realization is not spoken with awe, the revelation mundane to him. A fact only. The hand he has clasped around the hilt of his sword flexes, and for one terrible second, you nearly fear that he might unsheathe it to strike you down. But blessedly, the blade remains housed within its scabbard, and your flesh intact. For now, at the very least. 

"We have," you confirm. 

You only barely recall that night, an obscure thing in your mind, murky from the passage of time. It makes it a bit of a shock that he of all people would still remember it at all. You were both a few years younger than you are now, faces a little softer with youth. A tourney much like this one. A banquet. And you had been troubled with fascination then, your eyes frequently flickering to peruse the boy you heard so much about. Desperately intrigued, captivated to see the one who boldly claimed to be a dragon incarnate. 

Your mind having gone wild with the rumors; fire trapped in a human vessel. But when you had looked to him, somehow withdrawn and petulant all at once, you only saw a child. Beautiful, but spoiled. A true Targaryen. It made your stomach flutter and sink with disappointment. 

"The Baratheon girl," he settles on it with something that you can't name. It isn't loud or impassioned. Simply placid in its nature, a conclusion that was always going to be reached. 

He steps in closer, creeping further into the tent, and it feels so much like a predator closing in on its pray. You don't allow yourself to flinch. You keep your body composed, a stag with its antlers raised high to the heavens, refusing to falter, even while the dragon circles overhead.

The closer he draws, the more something expands out between you. An unnamed thing that you can't place, but it trickles in alongside the stark cold of panic, the venom of your hatred. A spark. An ember. Smoldering until it heats in the base of your belly and catches. 

A challenge. It's like being back on the lists, again. Clad in your armor, powerful, the strength of a horse propelling you forward, and he, the foe who awaits you on the other side. Lances at the ready, preparing to deal blows. 

Your dread dulls, crushed back. Forced to make way for something stronger. An excitement that flares in the unlikeliest of circumstances. 

While yours raises, his head lowers. Tilting in a way that almost seems demeaning, watching you from under the ridge of his brows. 

"Tell me. What is a noble lady such as yourself doing here, traveling with only the companionship of a single knight?"

The question buries its way under your skin, sharp, prodding. And for a man who is speaking off what is proper, he has stood himself much too far within your proximity, smelling of bergamot oil, warmth and earth and spice. Close enough that you could reach out and strike him if you were idiotic enough to do so.

"It would cause quite a stir, would it not, if people were to learn that the granddaughter of Lord Roger Baratheon was left unattended, in nothing more than her shift. Sharing accommodations with the alleged Ser Deitrich." He breathes in a heavy sigh, expression shifting into a vividly insincere distress. "The rumors would be scathing." 

He steps away from you then, seeming to take the air in your lungs with his presence. The brunt of his words hanging upon your shoulders, broad and heavy like stones. And that singular word rings in your ears, an echo that forces you to hear it. 'Alleged'. Said so casually, but it was homed in like an arrow on its target. 

"I suppose you would be quite familiar with the people's proclivities for gossip, my lord." A snub disguised as an offhand remark, just enough to stir him. To distract him from his speculations, even if only for a moment. "But you need not worry yourself with the matters of my reputation, though it is appreciated." 

You don't miss the glare he passes you from over his shoulder while he walks, his irritation successfully roused, but to your surprise he does not lash out wildly. Not yet at least.

He's attentions seem occupied, and you have no choice but to watch with horror welling inside of your belly as he strolls over to your armor as though it is his right to do so. Reaching down to place his palms across the shinning metal, glimmering in the candlelight like something sacred, and now he means to desecrate it with his hands.

Possessiveness rips through your chest, a violent blossoming, because he touches freely what does not belong to him. 

It's your and yours alone, and yet you watch as he plucks your helmet up within his hands. Fingers strong but lithe while they caress over the craftsmanship, the fine etching and precise artistry of the visor, running along its hinges, feeling them against his skin.

And then his thumbs drift, running along the raised metal that creates the illusion of snarling teeth, lethal fangs primed for carnage. He smooths the pads of his thumbs there, taking care to feel and consider each one as though they are sanctified.

It's only once he is finished studying those faux fangs that his touch passes further. Settling over the dent that has been crumbled into the metal with something that feels too close to reverence. You know that it is not the shadows playing tricks when you see the corner of his mouth lift in a vague impression of a smile. 

No doubt reliving the moment he had thrusted his lance into your helm and left you broken upon the back of your horse. 

"You move your tongue with all the hubris of someone who does not realize they could lose it," he comments almost absentmindedly, relaxed in his threat. His gaze unmoving from your helm. "If I were to send my men out search for a Ser Deitrich, they would not be successful. He is a man who does not exist; I know that now." 

It's only then that he pries his focus from the armor in order to gauge your reaction. 

"This is you, yes?" He angles himself on his feet to face you properly, raising your helmet up in a single hand to wave it softly. The care he had previously shown it now traded for carelessness.  

This feeling must be worse than death. The helplessness, the sluggish agony of it all. A slow acting poison gradually devastating your body. Tearing it down while you still inhabit it, your world teetering on collapse right in front of you. 

You long to lash out. To flee. Trapped animals often do. 

But you do not afford yourself the luxury of being an animal. 

"You think that I would dare to pose as a knight?" A bitter laugh escapes you, placed between a limbo of airy and strained. Faked amusement that sits tight around your body like a false skin. "That would be— " 

"A crime," he finishes. Candid. The cut of a blade striking through bone. He drops your helm back on the rest of the armor, and your teeth clench at the disrespect of it. The metallic clatter that comes from the fall. "Your reputation would be soiled, house mocked. You'd be dragged through King's Landing, humiliated publicly for your offense against the Crown."  

He moves and steps before you again, the red in the mahogany of his doublet making him look dipped in cruor, soaked from slaughter, a cruel being that only knows destruction. 

Deep down, you always knew that this bit of independence you carved for yourself was borrowed. Temporary. You just did not realize that the end of it would have come so soon. Though a part of you still cannot accept this defeat. Will not admit that you have been discovered. The hope is there despite it all, stupid, but burning. 

He must see something in your face, the internal struggle warring within you. When your mouth parts to speak, he moves towards you, jarring enough that the words become smoke in your mouth. 

"No more of this game." He shakes his head as though he were chiding a pet. "I've grown bored of it." 

He's near enough now that you can see his eyes distinctly, given no option but to handle the weight of them. Their dangerous scrutiny. The quiet fascination turning the purple vivid, lilac and violet made incandescent from his intensity. A shade inhuman.

The illumination from the flickering candles does not ease that otherworldliness, it only exacerbates it. Scattering sparks upon the short crop of his hair, gold and silver twined together, as though the sun and moon have been crowned upon his head. It makes him look akin to a terror from myth. A being from the underworld, brought to the earth to sow misery. 

The anxiety has taken full root in your belly, vines twisting tight around the pit of it, restricting around the width of your ribcage. Cinching tighter and tighter until you think you may lose your breath completely. 

"Well, now that you think me to be a criminal, what do you plan on doing with me?" You hold yourself firm, fashioning yourself into a pillar of courage, even while you do not feel so. "Shall I be dragged away in chains? Shown the full breadth of Targaryen generosity?" 

His mouth twists, pulling at the corners in a grimace and your vision tracks as he rolls his tongue behind the plush of his lips, gliding it over his teeth. Annoyance.

His shoulders shift in a subtle inhale, like he's wrestling with his temper, keeping it at bay. But you are not so gullible. His anger is infamous, talked about on the mouths of many. You pinpoint the exact moment a decision is made, the acceptance of it settling throughout the full stretch of his body. 

"If I touched my palm to your throat, would you feel pain?" 

For a moment you blank. And then it dawns. 

He remembers. He remembers exactly where he struck you and now, he means to wield that knowledge like a dagger. 

He wants to watch you struggle. To toy with you as a cat would a mouse stuck between its claws. That's all this is to him. That's what it has been as soon as he stepped into your tent unannounced and realized that Ser Deitrich was a man who does not exist. A fiction that has been believed by the minds of the people. This is Prince Aerion's response. Cruelty. His punishment for thinking that you could ever try to ruse him. That you would dare to strike him down in combat. 

And shamefully it thrills you. The same competitive part of your soul that delights in the thrill of the joust, the rush of it, prowls forward. Summoned by the promise of savagery in his stare.  

You tilt your jaw back, baring your throat for the taking. And down along the distant fringes of your mind, the voice of reason screams, common sense urging you not to test him.

You ignore it. 

"See for yourself, my lord." 

The presence his body language adopts can only be described as zoic. Tension coiling through the set of his shoulders, spine pulling up straight. Looking ever so much like a dragon unwinding, head raising in a primal interest to look down upon the stag who's foolishly stirred its curiosity, taunting fire and scorching breath with its blind confidence. 

You feel too much like prey getting ready to be snapped between the flash of teeth, razor-pointed fangs bracing to sink through soft hide and sweet sinew. 

His eyes are blazing again, the oily hue casted about the tent reflecting above his pupils like an animal peering through the dark. The dramatic umbra scattering over the shape of his person, contouring his face with soft-edged patches of darkness; fitted around him like an armor.

The glint of candlelight in his eyes reveals the emotions raging behind them, accentuating the intensity there that nearly seems manic. As though he's flirting with the temptation of passing into something dangerous. Something that might just consume you both. 

And then he speaks, spoken in a hush as though he is extending the intimacy of sharing a secret and not a threat. "Do not make to test me, little stag. You will not win." 

He does not move quickly as you might have anticipated. It is not done with the agility of a snake, abrupt and violent. He raises his arm slowly, drawing out the anticipation until it feels as though it might strangle you before he does. Making you wait for his fingers to stretch and curl around the circumference of your throat. Not yet touching you, only hovering there right above the warmth of your skin in a taunt. The warning there, looming before you, cemented by the heat of his flesh, unnaturally hot, belonging to a spirit of fire rather than a man. 

He locks his stare with your own then, holding you hostage with it while his fingers begin to curl tighter. Assessing your reaction to the gradually increasing pressure carefully, waiting to see if you might recoil.

You have to concentrate not to do so. His touch is light, barely a full clasp, just allowing you to feel the impression of his hand, but your aggravated flesh aches with it already. His skin is hot, as though he is ignited from within. The ancient dragons-blood coursing through his veins turning him into a vessel of heat, and it worsens the damage of your throat just as much as it seems to soothe it. Scorching where it lay, made of embers and smoke. 

Your fingers almost twitch from where they dangle at your sides, and you have to consciously make the effort to keep them still. The pain sinks through the tendons of your throat, fizzling and darting in a throbbing scatter. But you maintain your composure, willing yourself to remain serene, resisting the grimace that attempts to show. 

He continues to watch you keenly. A predator waiting for its quarry to twitch, to show its fear. 

But you do not break. Not even when his fingers strengthen around your neck in a firm grasp. You expected it, the weight, the seize of it, but that does not keep it from being a shock to your body.

His grip hardly tapers your ability to breathe, the pressure of it easy enough that you may still draw in a gasp to steady yourself, but gods that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. The pain of it flashes behind your eyes, a brief cluster of stars erupting along the boarders your vision and your instincts rage at you to twist from his grip. 

You catch yourself before you can. Bones turning to stone, keeping your feet planted as though they have become rooted into place. 

Prince Aerion's head cocks, lips almost pursing as he watches you with all the fierceness of a hawk, trying to detect even the faintest indication of a wince on your face. 

You give him nothing. 

His disappointment is palpable. His annoyance is a swelter on the air, stifling like the vigor of a mid-day sun.  

"Are you satisfied with your examination my lord, or are you finally willing to accept that I am not the man you seek?" 

Honestly, you are not certain why you are continuing the charade. He already knows your secret. The evidence of your misdeed stacked against you. Perhaps it is just stubbornness. The inability to relent. Baratheon obstinance cresting high within you, trembling within your belly, brought forward by the opportunity to face down a formidable foe. Awakened by the scent of smoke and spice, an enemy made of armored scales and heat. A natural adversary. 

Or maybe it is only the chase of it. The challenge it provides. You have always hunted after things that were not meant for you. The excitement of adventure, the luxuries not afforded to the station of your sex. You long for what is out of your reach. And he is a danger that entices you when he should not. 

You see in his eyes that he will not take defeat. 

"Your throat is not the only place I dealt damage to." 

For one embarrassing moment, you struggle to realize what he is insinuating. Not out of stupidity, but from the inability to accept that he is truly implying such a thing.

It does not take long for your mind to run through the list of your injuries, the ones that he has seen with his own eyes. The ones he's touched. It settles on the outlier with a dread that plummets down within the seat of your gut. A buzz that flickers through your bloodstream. That horrendously, is far too close to a surge of excitement. 

This interaction is swiftly getting out of hand — though to be truthful, it was never in hand to begin with. You aren't clueless to his request. His demand, more the like. You may be a lady of one of the Great Houses, but that does make you ignorant to the ways of men and their ruthlessness. Their arrogance. If anything, it has only made you more familiar. 

He wishes to see you bare. In a condition that no other man has ever dared to request from you. Never have been so bold, so witless. 

And yet here he is, suggesting it as though it is something he is owed. 

You should slap him. In a perfect world, you would have. But you see this for what it is. Another one of his tests. To see if you will stray from it. Relent. And that vexes you more than it should. The correct thing to do would be to protect your modesty. To deny his request with a vehemence, fury spilling from your mouth. 

But it has never been in your nature to back down. 

"Remove your shift," he orders, and the fingers around your neck flex tighter with the decree. A silent, aggressive encouragement. 

But already your hands are raising to your chest, nimble fingertips reaching to pluck at the ties draped from the low hang of the garment's neckline. You move at a pace that is slow, unhurried underneath the prince's weighted focus. Drawing it out because of hesitation or the need to tantalize, you aren't sure anymore. It's all spilt together in one chaotic mess. Irritation and passion weaved into something that should not exist but demands to. 

Humiliation and satisfaction possess you in equal measure, twisting and fighting for dominance, transforming into heat within the vessel of your body. A part of you, still timid wants to shrink under his gaze. The vulnerability of it all urging you to turn away, to curl in on yourself for shelter, but you shove it down until it's but a faint impression in the back of your mind. Wilting and useless along its fringes. 

You aren't entirely inexperienced with the presence of men. Though untoward, you have flirted before. Passing honeysweet smiles to the soldiers in your uncle's service and the stable hands of Storm's End.

You've held a man in the palm of your hands before, flushed and rigid, stroking him underneath the cover of the gardens until he spilt into your hands, the affair clandestine, frantic. A secret you clutch close to your chest. You had held him in your mouth, too. Tasted the salt of him, traced him with your tongue. And in turn he had lent you his fingers underneath the layer of your skirts, strumming them between your thighs until you writhed and wailed into the flat of his hand to dampen your cries. 

But there is something about Prince Aerion seeing you so unguarded, skin bare, naked as the day you were born that is incredibly daunting. Rising high before you like a mountain you aren't sure you can scale. 

You tug the cords free regardless, and the hemline goes slack from where it rests against your clavicles. The weight of the fabric slipping free from where it hangs on your shoulders, but you do not wait for it to fall on its own. You tug at the linen, maintaining eye contact with the prince as it glides down the length of your body, the loose fit of the sleeves brushing down your arms and past them. 

You allow the rest of it to drop, the material pooling around your feet in a disregarded pile. 

And now there's nothing to protect your body from the brunt of his gaze. 

You are wholly, fully naked. 

The air swaddles you, a satin, tepid from the thawing spring. Leaving no inch of you untouched. Brushing over your heated skin, a caress. And your entire being comes alive with it, chest rising and falling with pronounced breaths. You can feel your body reacting to it all, the light chill, the heat of his unfaltering stare, causing you to turn hot. Nipples already hardening, something molten building at the base of your spine. 

You command your chin to remain high. "Does that please you, my prince?" 

A hum rises from the base of his throat. A lazy sound, as though he is considering the question. He does not slacken his hold around your neck, does not drop his arm.

Instead he draws even closer, giving himself the proximity needed to bend his elbow without strain. Providing the proper means to take you in. Debauched, lacking any delicacy as he sweeps his focus over you from head to toe in a slow crawl. Pausing to take unabashed consideration of your breasts, watching them shift with the rhythm of your breathing, the swell of them. Gaze slipping lower across the length of your belly until he finds the thatch of hair between your thighs. Taking you in completely, as though he's savoring the sight. Indulging in it. 

But the smile that toys with the corners of his mouth is taunting.  

"What a surprise this is." He nearly croons with it, tone smooth but lilted around the edges. "You'd make a fine wench." 

There's a barb tucked away behind your lips, your tongue made a dagger with it, but sense keeps it held away. It would not be wise to irritate him now, with his hand around your neck. Though you think that keeping yourself silent might be a worse pain than the strike of his lance. 

"Where was it exactly," he ponders aloud, seemingly to himself but the mockery is clear within the inflections of his voice. "Was it here?" 

His hand finally releases your throat, knuckles skimming past the divot between your clavicles, halting to press over your breastbone. The skin there fine, healthy. Unmarked by the blow he had delivered out on the lists, and he must know that. It is too high. Untouched by pain. 

You don't react. 

"No?" His brows lift. "How about here then." 

And that's when his fingers drag, and you have to suppress a shiver as they migrate, audacious in their trajectory even as they glide further down towards your breasts. Undeterred in his goal.

You almost shudder with it, your ribcage threatening to heave when your flesh turns tender under the backs of his fingertips. The points of them sweeping directly between the valley of your breasts, pressing meanly to see you twist from the pain, and this time you almost do. 

The blow to your throat had only been a graze. The bite of it angry but manageable. But your chest had taken a direct hit. The full strength of his body had been poured into the strike of his lance, so vigorous, that the wood had erupted into a mad spray of slivers when it met your armor. 

The damage on your chest is much worse than the dull ache on the hollow of your throat. It's damning. 

Your façade almost breaks. Reduced to ash under the dig of his knuckles, but determination keeps it fixed in place. The mask of your indifference solid and still upon your face. But he does not allot you the ability to brace yourself further, to steel your nerves against the weight of his hand. His thumb joins the curl of his fingers, pressing into the softness of your skin in the hopes to see you shatter, applying pressure where the vessels under your flesh have ruptured, made tender with the bruise. 

It's so vulgar, but the hurt of it lashes through you in a way it shouldn't. Wrong. Abnormal. Because it mutates into something else entirely, coiling tight until it doesn't register as pure pain, but a pleasure that is illogical. 

It's not the ache that ruins you, but the strange bliss of it. 

A sound escapes from you. Small and pitiful. 

You wish that the gods would grant you mercy and smite you where you stand. 

He must notice it. The haze that you know has begun to cloud your eyes. Must see it for what it truly is, not from pain but from elation.  

"Oh, that is sweet." It's cruelty delighting in its discovery. Mocking. Brilliant and brutal in its ridicule, and it glints there clearly in his stare. "The little Baratheon girl likes being touched by a dragon, does she." 

Denial would be easy, though not particularly convincing when you have both of your breasts are out and heaving for him to leer at. Having offered yourself up on a platter, as though you were something to consume. But you are not the only one who appears to be affected.

You spy it. The traces of it in how he holds himself. The ceaseless caress of his thumb smoothing circles above the hollow of your sternum as though he can't part from your flesh, the subtle pinch of his brows like he's been tempted, the light flush in his cheeks, rosy in a blush from the blood searing hot in his veins. 

He hides behind his ego well, but you can see through the fissures all the same. 

It emboldens you more than it should. And that newfound courage flows through you, more intoxicating than any mead. 

This time it is you who dares to step closer. The distance between you vanishing until there is but a sliver between your bodies. You feel half mad when you lean into him, just enough that the tip of your nose is but a whisper away from touching the edge of his jaw, as though teasing him with the prospect of it. The scent of him is abundant here, kept rich and intense above the pulse point of his throat. Piquant with the tang of dark resin and citrus, melting over the flat of your tongue. 

His eyes have not slipped from yours, transfixed by your boldness. Made quiet when you angle your head, so close that if you were to be so valorous, your lips might touch his. 

"Only the pretty ones," you answer.

The hand he keeps to your chest doesn't remain idle, fingers unfurling to stroke the underside of your breast, igniting your skin. As though he is trying to distract you, to get your thoughts to slip. He nearly does.

Your focus becoming viscous, akin to the slow drip of molasses with how it seems to thicken. Wax melting sluggishly over an open flame. The lashes of your eyes almost fluttering when his thumb smooths out flat, joining his other fingers to frame your breast. Teasing you with their proximity to your nipple to make you ache. 

He is somehow wearied and sneering all at once, as though this entire thing has become trivial for him, but he is also too amused to stop it. He only seems to gravitate closer, the breath from his lips coasting over yours. "Lavishing me in flowery compliments will not be enough to dissuade me from the truth." 

Finally, you do manage to collect your wits, the familiar shape of words forming in your mouth, if just barely. "My praise is no tactic, my lord."

You smile playfully, a brief glimpse of teeth, a snarl. And for perhaps the first time in this entire encounter, the display actually feels authentic. The threat of him so close riveting you much more than it should. 

He remains completely unconvinced. Managing to look both stoic and brattish, everything about him decidedly unimpressed with you. 

But like a lunatic, delight sings in your belly, its resonance high, peaking over the horror that lingers. And the potency of that jubilation does not recede. It worsens the longer you sit within his proximity, becoming a gnarled and perverse thing. The heat of him radiating through the barrier of his clothes as though he were the sun, scorching, promising to sear you with the brunt of its rays. 

This, whatever this is will end badly. But your curiosity is a crippling thing. 

You want to see it again. That violence he had shown you out on the lists. The bite of blood tainting your mouth. 

Your hand rises from your side, fingers stretched to skim over the hilt of his sword, daring and more than a tad foolish. Indulging in the cold sting of the steel, the chill of the leather. Grasping it as though you might actually consider tugging the blade from its sheath. 

His grip on your chest tightens, controlled and firm. Fingertips pressing into your ribs, tenderizing where they grip. 

His chin dips towards his chest, chiding. "Careful," a steady murmur. 

You do not release the hilt, though your hold does slacken somewhat. Enough that you can investigate the elegant steel with the pads of your fingertips. Touch wandering, feeling the groves, the fine rubies that adorn the prongs extending from the pommel. Gaudy, opulent, but impressive. Something that should never be held within your hands, and yet, it is.

You nearly smile again, the impression of it toying with your lips. "Let us pretend for a moment, that I was your knight. Would you punish me, truly?" 

The shadows spill over his countenance, dark breaking through the gold; his gaze narrow. "I'll do whatever I want with you." 

It does not frighten as it should, it only satisfies. Encourages. 

There is a decision to be made here. A path to choose. It should be simple. Reason lurks deep down in the crux of your soul, pressing you to step back from this while you still are able. To do the appropriate thing and attempt to withdrawal, to reach down and collect you shift from the ground and slip it back over your body. To protect your decency as all ladies should, but the urge to do so remains detached from you.

The spell that has fallen over you both too captivating to ignore, though you know it assures nothing more but misfortune for your future. You're walking directly into a web, snagging on the threads, ensnaring yourself on the stick of the silk and you know there might not ever be a chance to free yourself once you're spun too deep. 

He holds your fate in the palm of his hands; you are not ignorant to that. The place you've found yourself standing is delicate and perilous. A single slip, a misstep and this could all get torn down in a torrent of fire.

Everything you've built for yourself, your status, the reputation of your house besmirched. You hold the attentions of a prince, one whose moods are as everchanging as the tides. If you earn his ire, if you so much as bore him, then he could catapult your life into upheaval. 

That should be terrifying. It is, truthfully. And yet, the risk of it, to dance with the mayhem is electrifying in a way that it shouldn't. It's corrupt, degenerate. But you want for it anyway.

You want him. 

"All these claims of being a dragon." You're prodding again, seeking for a break in his exterior, a flaw in his resolve. Calling upon a storm that you might not survive. But your voice rings out regardless, resolute in its cadence, velveteen with your mirth, biting as you urge him. "Prove it to me." 

It drops there in the dark, private, landing between you with all the impact of a star striking down upon the earth. And now you must survive the aftermath. 

You see the change in him. The lissome muscle hidden beneath the thick of his clothes bunching tight, his entire being emanating with his offense. Incredulous, shocked with your insolence, visibly raging by your gall. His visage twisting with fury.

You brace for the worst, hesitation flickering through you, fearful that maybe, you have finally pushed his limits too far. You expect for him to lash out. With the same brute force he had carried out on the lists, clad in his armor, steel and blood and wrath. 

You feel hypervigilant of everything. Harebrained. Turned sharp. But once you finally realize that he's moving, it's already too late. He lunges for you. Terrifyingly spy, a smear of movement that your eyes struggle to track, white and red made an approaching blur. 

His free hand is on your throat, pinning you in place. And then comes the teeth. 

He kisses how he fights. Brutal, overzealous. His mouth meeting yours as though he can conquer you through the exchange, hands gripping you in a tight clutch, squeezing you by the meat of your ribs. All to hold you to him, flattening himself to you so tightly that not so much as a sliver of space can exist between your bodies. As though you're something to hoard, to keep.

It's suffocating, desperate and painful; his nose grinding against yours in a way that aggravates the wound splitting your skin, and the throbbing scatter of it eviscerates gossamer whines from your lungs, thin, strained. 

His chest vibrates with his gratification, a sonorous purr expelling from somewhere deep, tucked down in the base of his gut. A contented, haughty noise that makes you bristle, muscles pulling taut from the irritation that shoots through you like a spear. Annoyance prickling over your skin while he takes pleasure in your pain.

You do not think when you act, instinct guiding you, urging you to bare your teeth through the kiss. Pronounced enamel sinking down into the soft fullness of his bottom lip in an animalistic reprimand. You bite until he jerks, thrashing like a rabbit snatched between your jaws, the taste of metal smearing over your tongue. 

His mouth parts from yours with an abrupt snap of his head, retreating far enough for him to look at you. Though his grip on your neck does not ease. If anything, it clenches firmer, the clean edges of his fingernails scraping over your flesh like he means to leave damage, the iron of his ring smarting.

And he keeps you there, stuck in place while he stares at you, emotions swarming behind his eyes. Making you bear witness to it all as it flickers across his face. The wrath that shows there, the shock. Observing you as though you're some strange puzzle that the universe has unceremoniously plopped into his lap. 

He's bleeding. You truly did make a prince, a son of the Targaryen dynasty, bleed. It's there. Wet, glittering, smudged on his rose-hued lips in a gruesome carmine, vibrant against the paleness of his skin. 

His gaze has widened just a fraction despite his obvious ire, a reflection of his bafflement. Apparently, you've managed to reduce him speechless. Not a single word spilling free from him, no shouting. He's terrifyingly silent. Chest heaving with his low panting, the fervor of your kissing already having made him breathless. Repeated, shallow exhales expelling past his wounded lips. And his pupils are blown wide, blackened chasms that nearly swallow the color in his eyes. He appears almost rabid. 

And you only return his stare. Already dazed, head becoming cloudy with the excitement and the ache that the exchange has left behind. And your vision is hooked onto him, thoroughly enraptured when his tongue slips out past his lips, licking the blood clean from where its trickled. Tasting the gore with a slow drag from the point of his tongue. A lazy, indulgent lap. Drinking himself. 

The visual of it settles directly between your thighs, crude and white-hot. A molten thing in your belly. 

You both remain in that way for an indiscernible amount of time. Seconds, minutes. The atmosphere around you having turned torpid, a slow crawl carried on the sultry glide of the air confined within the tent, and it dilutes everything into a galvanizing haze. The small gap between you charged with something that almost feels tangible on your flesh. Alive and breathing. Pulsing between your bodies.

He watches you. You watch him. 

And then you both break. 

It's unclear which of you two moves first. You and him pouncing as though it is a race to see who would meet the other, bodies rejoining in a surge of movement. Fevered skin meeting rich velvet; the leather of his belt a chill against you, the hilt of his sword briefly prodding you underneath the edge of your ribcage, just enough for you to grimace. 

But the muted ache isn't enough to dissuade you, to make you shrink back. Your hands are framing the sides of his face, cradling him in your palms to keep his lips on yours, fingers stretching out to comb through the short silk of his hair. Nails clawing, scratching over his scalp to feel him shiver from it. 

He tastes of blood, spice-sugared from wine he must have drank earlier, vivid and robust on your mouth. And you crave more of it, more of him, so when his tongue teases over your lips, saturated with the flavors of him, you nearly moan with the relief.

Your body presses to him tighter, squeezing flat as though you might be able to meld yourself into one, and the delicate texture of his doublet rubs across your chest when you do. The soft material gliding across your nipples, and the sensation is enough to rupture a starved ache down inside the depths of your chest, visceral and too wanting. 

It should be no surprise when his teeth sink into the meat of your lip, ruthless like fangs, his vengeance, but it blindsides you anyway. You whine from the smart of it, and your spine bows, writhing against him as it lashes through you, but you don't attempt to retreat from him. That would be a torture too great.

Now that you have him like this, you don't ever want to part. It's carnal. Ferocious in its need, stimulating in the marrow of your bones like a buried instinct finally realized. He's become a breath in your lungs, tainted with smoke, painful to inhale, turning your head muddled. But you can't live without it. 

He nudges your nose up with his own, the movement sharp, a little forceful but you allow it to guide you anyway. Angling the tilt of your head just so, so that he is able to shift himself more freely, fastening his mouth to yours with the nip of his teeth. And then his tongue glides along the seam of your lips, collecting your taste on his palate before he licks it into your mouth as you're laced with ambrosia.  

There's hardly any tact to this kiss. Little technique. It's a mess. A smear of spit, blood and passion. A sordid affair entirely unlike the sort of tryst you would hear the other ladies gossiping about, passionate engagements with tangled limbs, rose sweet and lust that's as tender as it is lewd.

This is all fire. Infernos slipping past both of your bodies to join you in a raging pyre, bones made kindling. Worlds apart from the chaste kiss you had shared with a rosy cheeked page when you were younger, or the explorative one that you had with the knight. 

This is yearning that's volatile. As though you both want to punish each other for it, like you couldn't possibly function without other now that you've experienced the fruits your union. 

He bites you again, sharper than the last. "You made me bleed," he manages in between kisses. 

"I did," you agree, breathless. "You enjoyed it." 

"You will right your wrong," he says, panting airily against your mouth like he can't be bothered to part from it. "Get down on your knees." 

His voice processes in your ears somehow gradual and all at once. And when you fully realize what he's said, the excitement that rips through you is so debilitating that your knees could have given it out if it was not for the persistent hold he has on you. Both hands iron clasps on your middle and neck. You can practically feel his satisfaction coiling off of him in waves. Appeased that he's been able to stun you once again. 

It's only then that he removes his mouth from yours, parting slowly, but not without gliding the tip of his tongue over the shape of your raw-bitten lips. Made swollen and tender from the impassioned gnash of his teeth. And the drag of it leaves sparks in its wake is damp and heated, warm like hot wax on your skin. 

His stare bores through you like a chisel, cutting, chipping pieces of you away one piece at a time to find what lurks beneath so that he may take it for himself. His expectation weighs heavy in his gaze, imposing, head tilted with an air of superiority. 

It's part of your nature to want to refute him. To raise another challenge. But there, underneath the surface of it all, is the curiosity to comply. To indulge him, and yourself to see what might come from it. To discover if he tastes just as good elsewhere.  

It is that interest that has you obeying. Shifting through his palms, and he allows you. Loosening his fingers so that you are able to slip through them, gliding between his hands like water to settle your knees onto the ground. The possible sting of it eased by the thin rushes that had been laid down during the assembly of your tent, the woven reeds a gentle cushion on your skin. 

You watch from below, head tilted upward, transfixed as his fingers skim down the front of his breeches, working deftly to undo them with a speed that betrays his apathetic exterior. His forearm nudges the pommel of his sword as he threads his fingertips through the lacing, causing the silver frog keeping the sword fixed to his belt to jingle lowly. A noise too musical and innocent for what is about to happen. The anticipation of it an aphrodisiac in your veins. 

His mouth his flat, glinting with spit, the traces of blood turned a rosy shade on the tight press of them. Shaped flat as though he is unaffected, but you can see the rapture so clearly in his eyes. Fervid and scintillating. And his own hands continue to betray him, trying to remain steady in their pace but there's an element to their motions that are just too eager. Reaching down into his loosened breeches hastily, as though the material might kill him if he remains contained inside of it for too much longer. 

You feel utterly depraved when your eyes fasten down to his groin, watching greedily as he finally slips himself free. And once you finally see him, unobstructed by the cover of his breeches, bare in front of you, your mouth floods with saliva, as shameless as a dog. 

The first time you had ever seen a man's cock, it had been intimidating. Alien, in a certain manner, though you understood it to be completely natural. Strange in a way that you had not anticipated, not even while you had talked alongside your more experienced peers who would boast of their husbands and paramours' sizes, and lament in explicit detail when there was something about them that they did not like. 

Though once the newness had worn off, you did not think too much of it. It seemed only a tool. Something to use to bring him pleasure and in turn yourself. But now you feel a touch mad, because it strikes you that somehow, Prince Aerion's cock is pretty. The thought seems so insane that you could have laughed if you were not so distracted, entirely occupied by the hard length of him, sitting fully between his thighs. 

Suddenly, he lowers one of his hands in front of your face, palm turned upward expectantly. It makes you feel naïve when your gaze flickers back up to his face, a silent question. 

"Spit." His fingers wave a little with the command, clearly impatient and it annoys you enough to contemplate refusal. But you abide him once again, too tempted to oppose. 

Your gazes are locked, his expectant and petulant — an expression you're becoming intimately familiar with, and yours surely drunken, eyes glazed around the edges. You let your mouth flood full with your saliva, holding it within the center of your tongue, fixing your stare tight to his own while you lean forward and part your lips, allowing it to trickle from your mouth in a thick flow. A filthy display that absolutely thrills you, arousal blossoming between your thighs, insistent and hot. 

The corners of his mouth curl in a faint hint of smile when your spit pools within the center of his palm, slick and glinting in the firelight. 

"So you do know how to listen," he murmurs, voice textured in smoke. Meant to demean rather than praise, but it licks down your spine regardless. 

With his hand made wet, he shifts it down onto his cock. Using his fingertips to slip his foreskin down the length of it before coating the dampness over the flushed weight of his girth, getting himself soaked with it. Using his thumb to also catch the spend that is already dripping from his head, making a lurid mix of arousal and saliva. The sheen of it once pale and pearlescent, made opaque as it joins with the spit from your mouth and you can't help but long for the taste of it. Thoughts utterly whorish. 

You were right before. 

He is pretty. Pretty in a fashion that he has no right to be. Long and ridged with veins that scatter along the sides of him. He doesn't seem exactly thick, though you do not have much experience to base that assumption on, but it doesn't bother you. There's no disappointment to be had. He looks to be perfectly substantial, the full length of his cock curving just the slightest towards its tip. 

He appears almost divine if you were to let yourself believe it. A god of old. The flames trembling on their wicks casting a glow around his head, a ghostly silver caught on the tips of his hair. Standing tall above you, and the position affects you more than it should. He strokes himself a few more times, gripped firmly in his palm, and his gaze turns heavy-lidded with the pleasure it must bring him. Cream hued eyelashes drooping low while a deep, relieved sigh puffs from his chest.

You can't tell anymore if he means to tease you, or himself. 

"Make it worth my while and I might just reward you." 

That's all it takes for you to drop your jaw open to accept him down your throat before he even has to order you for it. Something flickers through his expression before you can revel in the brunt of it, brows drawing close in an expression that seemed pained. But he masks it adroitly, a meanspirited glower taking its place, tinged with scorn. 

"Oh, you really are a whore." He speaks it in a scathing discovery. 

"Do you plan to fuck me like one then?" You smile as best as you can while you open your mouth ajar again, tongue presented in an audaciously coarse display. 

His glare darkens, made petrifying with the shadows. And then his free hand is taking hold of your jaw, thumb molding over the ridge of your cheek. "Try not to choke." 

Your only warning. 

He guides his cock into your mouth without further fanfare, setting a pace that you know you're not entirely equipped to handle. Your first time pleasing a man with your mouth, you had been able to take the time you needed. The knight having been patient, and willing to allow you to become familiar with the feel of him, the weight of him on your tongue. But Aerion Brightflame does not share so much as a shred of those qualities. At least not in this moment. 

He presses himself far to the back of your throat as though he is entitled to it, forcing your jaw to stretch wide to accommodate him. Your nose presses forward until it meets the flat of his pelvis, buried in the clean thatch of pale hair that grows there. You're bombarded with the scent of him, the flavor. It smothers you. Douses your tongue, fills up your lungs like a vapor. The distinct taste of skin, difficult to put into many words, but tinged with salt and musk. It's one you could grow addicted to if you aren't careful. 

You remember yourself; the little expertise you do have slipping back beneath your skin like an old ghost. You hardly think when you relax your throat to the best of your abilities, using your tongue to cushion it underneath the shape of his cock. Tracing the veins when he thrusts into your mouth. 

A groan is punched out from him, unbidden but stunted. You will your eyes to flicker up, peering at him through the tears that have already begun to blur around the corners of your vision, brought on by the horrible urge to gag. His head has tipped back just the slightest, throat lithe and exposed, showing the flex of the tendons underneath his skin, markedly luxuriating in the heat of your mouth. 

"That's it," he praises, but there's always an inflection to his voice that keeps it from sounding authentic. Degrading even in its congratulations. "You look at home on your knees like this, mouth full of my cock. Dare I say lovely." 

It's all meant to debase you, but it's like you were made the wrong way. Put together incorrectly because it only serves to arouse you more. All your life you have been treated like glass. Delicate. As though you might collapse if handled with too much pressure. Ever since a girlchild, you have been drawn to the clang of blades, of the grit of battle, but it was a fate distanced from you. Kept outside of your reach by the injustice of destiny, the cunt between your legs. Even the sers who taught you the ways of the sword when you were young had always hesitated. Gentled their blows in a way that you know they would have not were you born a male. 

But there is no mildness spared here by Prince Aerion. It is a push and pull, a fight to see who may come out the victor. Claws and teeth. The relentless shift of power. One that does not have an apparent winner just yet. The night still young, and the tides are fit to change at any time. 

You remind yourself to breathe through your nose, commanding your lungs to inhale each time he slips his cock at the way out until only the head is balanced on your tongue. Giving you only enough reprieve to gulp down scraps of air in between the drive of his hips. 

You settle your palms on the width of his thighs, using it as support, fingers hooking on the material of his breeches. It's leverage, a brace while you resist the instinct to choke around his cock. The muscles in your throat trying desperately to constrict, instinctively resisting against the ceaseless exit and reentry of his length. The barrage of his head slipping down deep. 

But you do not lurch back. You steel yourself against your body's urges and persevere. You grip his breeches tighter until you feel the weight of his thighs underneath, and with another strained gulp of air, you fight back against the resistant hand he has securing your head until it gives a little. From his surprise or intrigue you can't be sure, but you don't stall yourself with overthinking it. 

You adjust your own pace, ignoring the bite that blossoms at the base of your roots when Prince Aerion's grip seizes around your hair, bobbing up and down to swallow your mouth around his cock. Altering the harsh, staunch rhythm he had set into something more unhurried. Deliberate. 

You glide your tongue up the underside of his length, taking your time to spoil yourself with the heat of him pressed to your mouth. Balancing the weight of it there, lapping at the veins throbbing in their scatter across his girth as you drift your lips around the head. Drinking greedily, lazily, when a plentiful drop of cum trickles from his slit. Salt spilling over your tongue to be drank down your waiting throat. 

He's looking down at you with parted lips. Blissed out and offended simultaneously. As though he's peeved that you've denied the restrictive guide of his hand but can't bring himself to voice his complaints through the suction of your mouth on his cock. 

His abdomen clenches when you seal your lips around his tip. You can tell that it has, even though the close fit of his doublet conceals his torso, his stomach twitches, eyes threatening to slip shut. And the low groans that are panting from him are beautiful things. You have to hear more. And that's all it takes to get you to throat his cock again, over and over, blinking through the tears, disregarding the sting that burns in your smothered lungs like embers. 

Doing anything to hear his voice. To see what will become of him when the pleasure engulfs him completely. 

And he's so close to it already, that much is obvious now. 

"Fuck," he curses and rambles as though he doesn't mean to. As though it's been torn out of him, flowing like a dam having broken free. The ecstasy having stripped him of his filter. "Seems that mouth is useful for something more than insolence. Better fit for this, I think. Made to wrapped around my cock, pretty and full; sweet little Baratheon knelt for the dragon." 

You moan around him. In agreement, out of pleasure. Choking yourself on him while the hinges of your jaw scream in protest, chest aching, spit smearing past the edges of your mouth in a mess. Sodden down your chin, and the noises it makes are wet each time his stones slap against your face with the thrusts of his hips. 

"You best not waste a single drop," he hisses, teeth sharp through his grimace. Face twisting with the sort of pleasure that appears painful. "I want watch you swallow it, just as you deserve." 

That nearly sounds like a true compliment, honeyed on the ragged brace of his voice. And then you feel it. The hardening of his length on your tongue, each individual muscle along his form pulling taut, thighs tightening under your palms. A full-bodied brace. Every facet of his being preparing for the brunt of it, and his fingers grip tight around your hair. Using it as leverage to once again assume control of your mouth so that he can fuck it on his cock.

A brisk, overzealous pace that suffocates you around his girth, the head of his cock knocking against the back of your throat. It has tears brimming in your eyes, pouring down your cheeks in full effect, and he actually smiles when he sees them, silvery in their cascade. A rueful sneer, sharp in sadistic jubilation. 

"Made for this," he repeats again, as though it is a fundamental truth. A prayer meant for the Seven. "What you're good for. Made to take me — " His voice snags completely, hitching around a gutted breath, and then just as he spills: "hells. Plea— Kostilus, ȳdra daor keligon. Gaomagon daor dare—" 

Foreign words greet your ears, a velveteen, rolling cadence emitted on a wounded breath. Beautiful, the sound of rolling it around in your head like pearls.

His face crumples with the rapture of it. Expression like agony, brows creased close, jaw agape in a silent groan while he floods your mouth. Staring directly into your eyes throughout it. His hips driving forward one last time with both hands now bracketing your face to keep you still while his cum spirts down your spasming throat, a heated pour. Making you take it all. 

You can nary see through the tears blotting out your sight, making it nothing but mist, but you can feel him double forward. Bowing as though a physical blow had been dealt to his stomach. 

All the while you make sure to swallow it just as he instructed until there's nothing left. Even once he finishes, he does not immediately extract himself from your mouth. He keeps himself held within its warmth while he softens. Panting as he collects himself, partaking in the same air he deprives you of while your nose is pressed against his heaving abdomen, chest alight while you struggle to catch a proper breath through your nostrils. 

In response, your palms travel up his thighs. Moving, seeking out the heat of his flesh and once they find the sliver of it left exposed by the loose drape of his breeches, your fingertips curl. Blunt nails turned sharp, brandished like claws to drag down the unprotected skin. Leaving irritated red streaks in their wake. 

He flinches but does not jerk away frantically as you had hoped, though you are still vindicated by the pained hiss that pours out onto the heady atmosphere, drawn out and primal. A wild noise burned low among the muffled tumult of a lute's strings being plucked just outside, the repetitive rise and fall of cheerful laughter. The hiss the same sound that a dragon might have once made before it discharged a pillar of flames from its gullet. 

His hold has lessened just enough that you are able to pull yourself from him, and his cock slips from your lips with the vulgar smear of saliva.

You allow yourself to drop back upon the ground, saved only by the support of your elbows as you recline back, chest rising and falling in sporadic gulps of air. The relief it offers is immediate, the subtle strain in your lungs finally soothed like burns appeased by a salve. 

You smile without being fully conscious of it, lips lilted while you pant through your open mouth as Prince Aerion looms over you. Foreboding as he had been on the lists, forehead glittering with a light sheen of sweat, cheeks made rose hued. But the gleam in his eyes is ferocious. Seething that you would dare to harm him once again. 

"You truly do not know how to behave, do you whore." He shakes his head when he speaks, lips twisting in snarl to show his teeth. Bared like he's considering tearing your throat out with them. "Turn your back to me, on your hands and knees." 

"I will do no such thing," you answer hastily, though your voice is steady despite your labored breathing. The indignation that shows on his face only amuses you more, his blatant confusion at your denial. Though this is a boundary that you will not bend on. You will fight with claws and blades if you must defend it. 

"You mean to refuse me," he snaps, tone dimming into something low and dangerous. 

"Yes." You shift a little on the points of your elbows, flattening the small of your back more comfortably on the ground. "Unlike you, my prince, when it comes time that I marry, it will be expected that my virtue is still intact. You will not fuck me. At least, not with your cock." 

You simper at him, though you know you shouldn't. Thoroughly entertained while you observe his face contort in the beginnings of an affronted sneer at your insinuation, a barb or refusal poised at the ready in his mouth. 

"That is unless, of course, my lord does not know how to please a woman in such a manner." 

It is another challenge raised, and you see everything in him draw up taut at the call of it. A predator scenting blood in the air, the promise of more violence. But you notice his desire to refute you as well. It is not entirely surprising, you suppose. There are many lords, you've heard, who deem going down between a lady's thighs to be beneath them. Caring only for their pleasure. And the prince has gotten his. It would make sense for him to turn away here. To leave you, wet and humiliated on the floor of your tent as a lady sullied. Abandoned to wallow within her own mortification. Naked. Alone. 

But he remains fixed in place. Feet unmoving. As though he is taking careful consideration of his next move. 

When his head tilts, you know his answer before he utters a single word. 

"You will beg me for mercy before I am through with you." 

The thrill that shoots through you is like a frenzied scatter of embers, carried upon your surprise. But you do not have time revel in your fortune and success. He moves quickly, dropping onto his knees as though he's being forced to do so, landing upon them so abruptly that you know it must ache.

He wedges himself between your thighs like he's furious, both hands hooking around the thick of your legs in the same manner as manacles to spread them far apart. It holds you open, made vulnerable to the clement air as it glides over the heat of your cunt in a way that makes you want to writhe. 

It gives you no choice to accept the reality that you have bared your all to the prince. That he is the first man who has ever seen you in your natural state. He's tasted your lips, licked the blood clean from them. Fucked himself within your mouth and drove himself as deeply as he could possibly go to feel the flex of your throat. And now he's kneeling between your thighs, staring directly at your cunt. 

Not a single soul has ever witnessed you this way. They have not exchanged blows with lances, bruised you and left you wounded. It is a certain kind of intimacy that feels devastating. Too great to confront. And so you do not.  

You pin your attention on to him, waiting with bated breath as he admires the crux of your legs, right where he has you so vulgarly splayed open. 

"You're soaking," he remarks candidly. The cruel edge of it is not lost on you. "Did it excite you when I fucked your mouth? When I used you like I paid you for it." 

"It did," you respond, unashamed. The pain, the pleasure, the want all stripping you of your abashment. "But I would like it much better if you forgo all the talking and finally return the favor." 

You hear the impact of the slap before you feel it. A sharp crack, flesh on flesh. And then the pain sings its way across your nerves, boiled water spilt over unprotected skin. Flaring hot across the side of your hip from his heavy-handed reprimand. The strike of his palm making you twist with a yelp, squirming like a fish thrown onto shore. 

His glare is cutting. "You'll keep quiet if you know what's good for you." 

The temptation to ignore his chiding wells up in you. A deluge, corkscrewing and churning within the confines of your body that demands you snap back. To level the playing field, but the chance to do so in snatched from you before you can properly reach for it. 

He settles himself down between your thighs with a dexterity that is startling. One second he's kneeling, and then in a single blink, he's shifted himself down onto the flat of his stomach and dropped his mouth open to lick a long stripe up the length of your cunt. Eager for someone who seemed so opposed.

It's a heavy drag that lashes over you. A heated glide and it's immediately overwhelming. You've only ever felt the touch of man's fingers before, and your own in the dark cover of your apartments, exploring yourself during the quiet hours to find what would make yourself shake. But you've never experienced anything like this. 

It's wet and impossibly hot, almost sweltering from the abnormal quality of his body's temperature, tongue made molten. It's pressure and texture, and wholly maddening. 

"Oh, fuck," you gasp, brows drawing close in shock while your eyes nearly roll back in their sockets. Your arrogance chased out from you with the precise sweeps of his tongue. Embarrassingly easy. 

"This sort of talk suits you so much better," he coos, and his breath drifts over your clit like a tease. Thankfully, his mouth does not remain unoccupied for long. With a short dip of his chin he seals his lips over you again. The elegant swoop of his nose parting you open for the onslaught of it all and you whine from it. As helpless and pitiful as a wounded dog. Given no other options but to remain on your back and take it. Made into a feast for him to gorge himself on. And he does so with more enthusiasm that you anticipated. 

You figured there would be a stiffness to his jaw, tongue stubborn and reluctant, but he licks at you with an ardency that is fit for a beast. 

He keeps you held down and impossibly still, hands shifting lower to bear pressure down on your hips. Keeping them fixed to the ground, skin stuck to the rushes at your back, the material threatening to chafe you if you continue in your blind efforts to squirm. But you can't stop it. You're overcome with the need to pull away from him and press yourself closer. Split between indecision, two different needs. You feel crazed with it and he's only just begun.

Your usual bite betrays you. The weight of his mouth tempering your intentions to get under his skin, the pleasure making the contents of your skull softened like the plush of cotton. Your usual sharpness is turned mellow. Steel made into flowers, a betrayal to yourself, but you can't stop it when praise spills from you instead of mockery. "That feels . . . Don't stop, please. Please don't." And then you moan, the noise uninhibited. An echo of pure pleasure. 

You feel entirely unlike yourself. Reduced to nothing by little more than a few expert lashes of his tongue, and it's a horrendous bliss. A barbaric fate, but you're succumbing to it all the same. 

You don't realize that your eyes had shut until they're slipping back open, and the first thing you see is the prince, packed between your legs. His gaze meets yours, low-lidded and blazing with the determination to see you ruined. And something about the eye contact makes you startingly aware of how close to your end you already are. Wound tight when he's only just gotten his mouth on you, the fire that's been burning inside of you since he put his hand on your throat now threatening to light you asunder. 

And he regrettably, he reads your body as though he is already fluent in its language. 

"Close already? How adorable." 

You manage a snarl, but your voice trembles too much to be frightening. "Shut up—" 

He sucks his tongue against your clit just as you speak, silencing you with a wave of ecstasy, stars blinding your vision. He hums, arrogant and pleased with himself at your silence. 

He may be able to make you mute, but he can't halt the reach of your hands. Your fingers scratch through his hair, threading tight in palmfuls that must sting. You feel the way his breath hitches against you. Caught off guard, made to wince by the ache of it. But to your shock he does not remove himself from beneath their grip.

He keeps his mouth fixed to your cunt, licking at you messily, the wet smack of it cresting high within the tent, and you are so thankful for all of the commotion outside. If it were not for it, you both would have been discovered by now. 

But his efforts double, as if spurred on by the pain of your grip. Those otherworldly eyes watching you through the thin gap made between your arms, assessing each reaction that shifts across your face. The set of your open mouth, the furrow between your brows; sweat shinning there in a thin coat. 

His tongue slips into the entrance of your cunt, stretching you open on the thickness of it, making your breath skip. The point of his nose brushing over your clit simultaneously, and it's that layered stimulation that hurtles you over the edge. It greets you with lightning and embers, the strength of it choking out your voice when it tumbles out from you. Nothing but a jumbled string of his name and moaned pleading that you don't have the strength to be discomfit about. 

But you aren't given the proper time to get acquainted with the high of it. To coast on its bliss freely, because you discern somewhat dazedly, that he isn't stopping. 

"You asked for my tongue," he explains, muffled against your tender cunt as though he heard the very thoughts swarming about your head. "So do not complain when you get it." 

Bastard.

But you would be a liar if you couldn't admit that it made your pulse spike with excitement, even while your body twists as it all continues to roll through you. Ravaging you completely. Scourging its way through the thick of your bones, roaring in your blood. Everything is made sensitive. Too bright. Too wild. Dancing on the fringes of pain. 

Your whines are punched out of you. Compressed from the seize of your ribcage when it twitches, turning the noises you make pitchy and drawn out. And you fist at his hair, nails raking through the silk of it as a pathetic means to keep yourself from floating outside of your body. It's a torment that's unbearably sweet. So exquisite that hollows you out, leaving room for nothing but euphoria. 

He always shivers when you claw at his scalp, and so you do it again and again. And you're rewarded with the sensation of a soft tremor against your palms, quivering up the back of his neck. You recognize it for what it is: a weak point. And you exploit it, continuously combing your fingers through his hair, soothing the sting when you dig the edges of your nails into his skin, right at the roots. 

He groans each time you do, and the thrum of his voice sends vibrations across your cunt, doubling the pleasure brought on by the relentless strokes of his tongue.  

You praise him as tears begin to well up behind the waterline of your eyes, the flow of them sprung by the raw bliss that continues to eat through you. Agonized from with an almost violent pressure. The suck of his mouth, his tongue, how his nose swipes through you, bathing his face in the slick of your arousal. 

Your spine pulls into a tense arch, the injury in your neck throbbing in protest as a loud cry pierces the air. Made from pain and rapture. "You are so good, Aerion, feel so good." 

Gods, he actually whines, and you don't think he's even realized it. 

It's soft, smothered between your thighs but the effect it has on you is one that's intense, a fire in your blood. When you look down at him again, forcing your chin to tilt so that you are able to witness him, the expression on his face can only be described as wrecked. His gaze isn't sharp anymore. It's glazed over. Glassy eyed like he's been slipped under a spell, like the soft praise has shot directly through his entirety, viscera and all. 

The suction of his lips on your clit turns tight, a relentless pull, loosening only so that he can lave it with his tongue. Like he's trying to demand more admiration from you, silently bidding that you give him the acclaim he craves. 

And for reasons beyond you, you want to give it to him. 

Whatever façade you were clinging to having been torn from you, gone like a spirit having slipped free from its remains. 

"So pretty, fucking me so well with your tongue," you pant and watch, gratified when the space between his brows pulls close, and he groans again. His hips jerk in a sluggish cant against the ground, as though he can't help himself. And you lie in place, enthralled, when one of his hands releases its clasp on your thigh, moving fast and awkwardly to slip between the press of his stomach and the floor so that he can take himself within his hand. Gripping his own cock to work himself to completion again. 

It is a sight that you think will be permanently engraved into your skull. The desperation of it. How he's fervently pumping himself in hand while he fucks his tongue into you. 

This is not a prince between your thighs, but a whore. 

"Please don't stop," you beg, and his lashes flutter. "Please don't stop, I'm so close. So so so close." 

"Say you're mine," he demands in a slur. Feverish with his need. Lips smacking when they move away from your clit, but his tongue is quick to take their place. The tip coasting around the tender shape of it in tight, incessant circles that nearly make you mad, building up that intimate coil of pleasure again. Already. So soon. So close you can taste it. "Say it. That even once you have a husband, fucking a man who cannot please you, you will be reminded of this. You'll remember me." 

"I'm yours," you acquiesce in a near sob, and something inside of you splits down the middle. The trunk of an oak tree cleaved in half from the strike of a lightning bolt. "I'm yours, I swear it. I'll think only of you, just you." 

Those words ripple through the haze of sex, expanding wide like an incantation sent out into the universe, and he basks in it.

You allow it to take you.

And it sweeps you under with a vigor that you are not prepared for. So much more intense than the first crest of pleasure he had given you, turned radiant and savage from drifting on the bliss that hadn't entirely ebbed. 

A frenzied torrent of raw, relentless ecstasy that feels as though you've touched the sun. Your body blazing with it. The pulse of your heartbeat raging in your ears like the boom of war drums. A tumultuous patter that makes it difficult to hear, but you do not miss the sound of Prince Aerion groaning, voice turned a high rasp as he fucks his fist until he finishes. 

You allow yourself to fall lax. Limbs weakening, muscles limp while you endure the aftershocks. Feeling it sweep through you as a riptide, the churning of froth and heavy water that you do not resist. 

It's reduced you speechless as you stare up at the high ceiling of your tent, admiring absentmindedly as the gentle gale outside causes the fabric to billow. You're spent and winded, skin glittering with perspiration, sore in a bittersweet ache that you know will be hellish by the morrow. But truthfully, you can't be bothered to contemplate the coming of the dawn and the consequences it will bring. Now that the fervor has waned, all that left is a simple quiet. A hush that feels . . . peaceful. Earned. 

It would be easy to pretend that you were both close lovers, idle in each other's presence. United by devotion and not only violence. 

Your fingers have not yet retracted from the prince's hair. But instead of talons, they have mellowed into circling relaxed caresses against his scalp. Your thumb occasionally drifting down to stroke along the damp skin of his forehead. 

He too has made no attempts to move, all but lazing between your thighs. Though his lips are still active, teeth nipping where they trace, leaving the sensation of small stings in their wake. You do not make to admonish him for it, or to shift out from beneath his weight. You leave him to his own devices, clutching flesh between his teeth to make it tender. Like he needs to leave confirmation of his existence there. 

Though it does not take long at all for the wandering of his bites to finally garner your focus. The trajectory of their path piquing your interest, a light breaking through the tranquil fog. 

"What exactly are you doing?" you ask without looking at him. Contented to admire the shadows projected upon the walls, made tall from the bonfires outside, the candles burning from the nearby table. 

His nose skims over the junction of your thigh, tongue lapping out to taste the salt on your skin. A promise for what's to come. 

His answer ripples through the night, a heavy smoke. 

"I told you that by the end of this you would be begging me for mercy, and I do not make idle threats." 

You can only smile when he takes you back into the relentless heat of his mouth.