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“If men could invent a woman who'd get pregnant without bedding any one of them, they would. But they’d keep the whores as they are. They just wouldn’t give them wombs.”
It wasn’t the most pleasant topic of conversation for a wedding day, especially one that had dawned so bright. But Bessa occasionally launched on tirades and everyone knew it was best to nod and hum else the work would never get done.
Neriña was only half paying attention. It was her wedding day. And all was well in her heart. She was a bastard girl with no prospects a short month ago. Now she was to be Jon’s wife – every girl wanted to be Jon’s wife – and become the mistress of their future farm holding, of four cows, three goats and fifty chickens, numbers that would surely increase with time and hard work.
Helya, who had done much to fight the match, was overheard saying but she’s Dornish as if that would encourage Jon to return to their childhood dalliance. Jon apparently snapped back and the prettiest wee girl I’ve ever seen!
The wee girl had made Neriña laugh when she heard of it. She did not mind the diminutive. Now she rather liked it when Jon called her his wee girl. She was his, she would always be his. Every time this thought ran through her head, she felt like an overripe fruit waiting to burst.
It was an auspicious day for a wedding. An old maester passing through the village on his way to Oldtown had claimed it to be so. These are glad times to celebrate good fortunes, he’d said. Celebrate to your hearts’ content. Peace is hard won and sweet as gods’ nectar in these parts.
It had been several years since the last ‘upset.’
If the Third Blackfyre Rebellion could be called just an upset. Dorne had come to the Iron
Throne’s aid, with scorpions made anew. No matter how sacred dragons were considered, the Blackfyre beasts were shot down like pheasants on a spring hunt. They were not very big, being that Daemon Blackfyre’s children had hatched their eggs, and not claimed fully grown war beasts.
Prince Maekar – now king – had ridden Vermithor for the first rebellion, but by the third, his sons rode in his stead after the passing of the Bronze Fury. A Bolton Master of Laws suggested new methods of cruelty towards even the hint of treason. No one wanted another real war between dragons. Thus far, the Blackfyre rebellions were mere skirmishes to the Targaryen civil wars that had gone before. Lord Bolton reverted the ruling house to its baser instincts and the message left after each crushed rebellion was stark: a battlefield filled with skinned and impaled corpses that their dragons fed on like pieces of fruit skewered on sticks.
Maekar was a stern, joyless king. But no one could deny that he was adept. His joylessness had returned peace to the realm and for that alone, a weaker king would be easily loved.
Still, the Dornish Marches were not the safest place to live under any king’s reign. But the new village was nearer to Summerhall than the southern border, and the people who came across it, usually ended up staying. It was a ragtag community of travellers and bastards with no connections that had decided they would stick together and make something from the very little that life had given them. When they had to, they moved and rebuilt elsewhere. It was a good way to live. Neriña’s baba certainly thought so when he’d brought her here.
Only seven short years ago, she could not have conceived of a day when she would don a red wedding dress and think to call herself someone’s bride.
How suddenly life could change.
“Hail to you, friends! And hail to the king, Maekar, First of His Name.”
Were it not a wedding, the reception might not have been so keen at this juncture of the evening. The light was waning and the shadows drew ominous. It was close to the time when people locked their doors and shut their windows. But most of the guests were either drunk or happily careening towards it.
Several voices cried back a hail to the king. They liked Maekar in these parts; once a Prince of Summerhall, the locals felt as if they had had a personal part to play in his ascension to the spiked seat.
“And hail to you, friend!” The village leader, Abaran, limped forth on his one good leg, and with his one good eye, gave the man a cheery squint. “Have you travelled far?”
“Indeed, I have. Merriment aplenty, I see. What is the occasion?”
“’Tis a wedding, friend.”
“A wedding! Marvelous.”
“Indeed, indeed! Wife, bring this man an ale! He has travelled far, and he will need to rest the night – no, no, I insist – night is close to falling, and these lands are not safe after dark, except for jackals and Manwoodys.”
Here, the stranger paused to drain his cup, offered by the delicate hand of Abaran’s wife. He would not pull back his hood. Pale eyes glinted, blueish lilac in the false light. It was hard to tell his age. But the sway of Abaran’s wife’s lantern revealed a scar twisting his cheek. She withdrew to her husband and whispered something that made the groove in his forehead deepen. He shook his head imperceptibly.
“And yet I see Dornishmen dancing there.” The stranger jerked his chin towards the bonfire, where he’d noticed cuts of clothing that spoke to hotter climes than the lands around Summerhall. “Friends of yours?”
“Outcasts. Sands mostly. There are many Flowers too, and Waters. Even a few Rivers. We had a Snow, but he went to the Wall, and we did not hear from him again.”
“A village of bastards.”
“A village of bastards!” Abaran agreed and laughed uproariously.
His laughter caught the notice of others, and soon a crowd formed. Strangers were always a source of fascination. Any one of them might end up remaining and become an asset to their little community for years on end. Those that wished only to sow the seeds of chaos were dealt with, for there were several battle-hardy veterans who had also taken up permanent residence.
“And where is the bride?” the stranger asked.
Dozens of pairs of hands drew her forward, giggling and blushing. She clung to her groom’s arm, shying away behind him when the stranger’s pale eyes burned in her direction. The groom – perhaps nineteen years of age – was tall, stocky and sandy blonde with blue eyes the colour of cornflowers. The stranger’s mouth twisted, and the scar rippled with it. He looked at the groom as if he were familiar with the man. It was not a pleasant expression.
But then his eyes settled on the bride, and he softened. Olive-skinned and raven-haired, she had three black dots marked on her chin to ward off evil. There was an openness on her face he liked. As if he might remove his clothes and go for a swim in those bronze eyes until he emerged fully glazed, like a god statuette.
“Will you not come and eat with us?” the bride offered in her flute’s whistle of a voice.
“Are you inviting me?”
“Of course.”
“Then I have no choice but to accept.”
A cheer went up – as drunk as the guests were, they might have cheered a dog barking at this late stage – and a few of the girls grabbed at his sleeves, pulling him into the crowd. One of them exclaimed at how expensive the material of his cloak was.
“Alas!” he exclaimed, “There is but one other guest with me. Will you not permit him entry too?”
Abaran granted that of course they would, and to summon his shy friend from wherever it was he hid. The stranger turned. A grin flashed across his face.
The ground stirred.
Only the bride noticed at first. She glanced down, lifting her foot as if it had betrayed her somehow. When she turned to her husband, the ground shook again. Now the others noticed. The crowd shook itself apart, each person stumbling in confusion as the vibrations encroached from all sides.
The stranger drank in each expression with avarice. He was enjoying himself immensely.
A monstrous shape arose from the hill, its wings devouring the moon. The stink of it was foul and in its gaped maw were teeth the length of a man’s arm. It made a terrible sound. A screeching-roar that pierced the ears like a spear. Black from its head to the very end of its tail, its spikes were dipped in scarlet-gold, and its eyes burned the same lusty colour. A flap of its wings cast a terrible hurricane of air over the gathered crowd.
Several people started running. They would not return until days after the terrible events were done. The ones who could not run were rooted. Vomit burst yellowish-white from several mouths, chunks of goat cheese and half-digested meat fouling their nice clothes. Some lost control of their bowels. Piss and shit and dragon stink mingled into an olfactory assault.
Off came the stranger’s hood, and underneath it, a cropped head of silver hair. There was no blue in his eyes. It was a trick of the light.
“Lykirī! Lykirī, Maelrax!”
The dragon answered with an irritated rumble and shook out its spine. With a stamp of its giant foot, it tilted into the air, casting another slap of wind over the dishevelled congregation.
The prince clapped his hands to redirect their attention.
“I believe…I was invited to eat.”
No sooner had he occupied the seat of honour, the prince invoked his rights to the First Night.
Had this been an ordinary prince – the kind they had in Dorne, or in Lys, or Tyrosh even – then some uproar might have been warranted. What would he have with him? A few guards. A sword. There would be complaints made to the king. The First Night was a barbaric custom, no longer practiced in the realm. Not even the smallfolk fell victim to it as they used to.
But this prince had a dragon, and dragons did not sit attendance at trials.
He could scorch them all here and their complaints would die with them. A prince of the blood would barely suffer for erasing a village of smallfolk. Bloodraven might take some pause for the ones that were bastards, but this prince was a trueborn. He had nothing in common with his hosts. And technically, he would not be violating guest right, as a dragon could not fit under this roof.
But still, it was not easy to give in. It could never be easy for anyone. The bride, young as she was, had remarkably managed to keep her composure. It was her groom who had tear-filled eyes. Neither of them moved from each other’s side. They sat in silence, as the villagers writhed in discomfort and misery. They all knew what would end up happening. There was never a doubt there.
“My prince, she is but an unwanted bastard from Dorne,” Abaran reasoned.
The prince smashed a walnut shell with the hilt of his knife. It appeared he was leery of the food served, common as it was.
“Do you think I am concerned with where she is from?” THUD. Another walnut broken. He threw the flakes into his mouth.
“Might I suggest Marisa – she is the red-haired lass there – widowed but a handful of months ago – and beautiful – “
A smile cracked the prince’s face in half. It was the kind of smile that was dazzling to look at. But just under its surface, the warning was implicit: keep talking, see what happens. THUD. He broke another walnut.
“I want the prettiest one.” He nodded at Neriña and wrinkled his nose, the dimples on his cheekbone kissed deep.
Were this a lord’s homestead, a raven would already be flying towards the Red Keep. Whatever madness the prince was set to wreak, news of it would be at his father’s door before he returned. Some punishment could at least be expected. But they were smallfolk. They had no ravens. Most of them could not read or write even if they did.
The prince’s lizard-eyes darted to his quarry, waiting.
She touched her groom’s hand once, a question uttered without words. She wanted reassurance that when she returned, he would still be here. The groom took his hand away and continued to stare at his plate.
“Stop sulking,” the prince scoffed. “Should she have a Valyrian babe, the dragon egg alone would make a town out of this scrappy little village.”
There were several stifled gasps and murmurs.
“You would give her a dragon egg, my prince?” Abaran asked in a hushed tone.
The prince’s lip curled. “To my child. Not to her, you greedy old cunt. Have the room prepared. I am quite done with this charade. Girl…come.”
“You may be seated.”
A simple permission turned into a riddle of the mind. She was no stranger to making difficult decisions, but this one was deceptively simple. Which piece of furniture would be best to get raped on?
The chair, the bed, the desk, the redwood chest, the windowsill. It was a sparse room but neatly furnished and cosy. Not her room, but a grand one. It was on loan from Abaran, just as his house had been loaned many times before to newly wedded couples. It was a community that ran on good will. For one night only, they could feel like a king and queen together, bathed in the glow of their nuptials. Being that Abaran was their leader, and a skilled craftsman at that, his house was always just slightly bigger. More space for people to gather there.
Her mind was wandering.
The prince stared at her.
She moved to the chair and the seat disappeared beneath a voluptuous bloom of skirts.
“Crimson.” He swilled wine between his cheeks and flicked his eyes over her dress. “Odd choice.”
“Dornish red.”
"Whorish red.”
“My father -” but the rest of the sentence was quickly swallowed down.
Her father was an Uller lord who had forced his seed into her mother from whence she’d sprung. Still, she could not bring herself to mention him in such a context. To be reminded she might have had some protection from all of this if she were trueborn was intolerable.
The ceiling shook under the heavy flap of wings overhead. The prince’s mouth twitched into a dreamy smile.
“Maelrax is restless.” He set down the cup with a solid thud and ran his hand over the wood of the sill, as if comparing it in his head to the fancier work done on the windows of the Red Keep. “He feels the turmoil inside me perhaps.”
At this, she looked up. Turmoil. Maybe he did not wish to do this, and some small part of him was conflicted over it. More than enough, surely, to provide her with a chance.
“He misses you,” she said, all hopeful innocence. It might have broken a weaker heart.
But the prince felt no such quiver in his chest. He simply noted that she had failed to address him correctly; the price for this would be exacted later. All they had was time at this deep hour of the night.
“Many women would consider you lucky.”
What she knew of women, and what the prince knew of women, seemed situated on opposite ends of a distended gap. She gave a half-nod. It seemed a reasonable compromise.
He set down his wine cup.
The room began to melt, like the pudgy edges of candle wax. He came to a stop behind her. His perfume smelled foreign. Cold fingers freed her hair from its red ribbons. She heard him sniff, deep, over the back of her scalp where she had once suffered a nasty bump when she was a child, as if he could still smell the wound.
“What is your name?”
“Neriña.”
“How pretty. I want you to do something for me, Neriña.”
She nodded uncertainly.
“I want you to stand and then bend at the waist. All the way down until you can grab your ankles.” He had the gentle, instructing lilt of a maester.
She got up on shaky legs, too numb to really consider what was being asked. Another instinct took over instead. She jerked towards the door. There was no real intent behind it, but the prince still kicked her ankle and knocked her down.
“You have pride.” He sounded almost wondrous, as if the very concept of the smallfolk feeling pride was miraculous. His boot pressed against her side, applying pressure. “I understand. We can make this easy, riña. You will not leave this room without being blessed. And when you do, your sandy-haired husband will raise my child until I am ready to welcome him – for it will be a boy – to court. I will put this foolish attempt off to weakness on your part.”
Her mouth stretched into a silent scream against the wooden floor. The panting would not stop. He had an animal underfoot. She had become little more than a crude impression of herself, with paws in place of hands and feet. His easy smile burned like salt on raw flesh. “Or Maelrax sets your people ablaze. Your choice. Shall we play nice with one another?”
On her second try, she succeeded. He stopped talking then. The skirt was tossed up her waist, falling in a bloody shower over her head. She remained bent over until her calves shook from the strain. His hand was on her, but she could not feel it. Everything had gone numb.
“Rise.”
He bid her open her mouth, and she did, so that each wedge of enamel could be counted by a stroke of his finger. He seemed pleased she had all her teeth. For a wildly displaced moment, she felt proud.
It began abruptly. He pushed her onto her knees and forced his cock into her mouth. He was not hard. She knew enough to pretend she did not notice. But she had never had one on her tongue, hard or otherwise, so her bodily reaction was the same. Her lips latched on but not the way he wanted, and when her teeth grazed it, she had her hair pulled and her cheek slapped.
Instructions followed, no longer a maester, but a trainer breaking in a horse. “Faster” and “slower” and “tighter” and “go lower” which meant she had to run her tongue over his testicles. They were easy, until he told her to take in both. She kept her mouth steady, palms sweating against his calves. The urge to bite was overwhelming. But he was slowly becoming erect. The quicker he was hard, the quicker this would be done with. She darted her eyes up. The prince was blinking at a spot on the wall, breathing uneven. He told her to release and then forced his semi-hard shaft back into her mouth. It nudged the back of her throat, and she was reminded of a worm she once wobbled in her palm.
“Eyes open.”
She stretched them wide, too afraid to blink. White flooded her vision. The hairs on his pubic mound tickled her nose, damp with sea-glass tears. When he finally grabbed her head, Neriña forced herself to go slack. She fixated on a scar at the left side of his abdomen as his cock plunged into the wound of her mouth. A guttural release of air from his lungs signalled a change. She did not know what it was, so it took her completely by surprise when her throat was suddenly clogged with salt liquid.
Some grazed the edge of the wrong pipe, and she broke into a fit of coughing. He pushed his hips into her face, cooing soft encouragement, and let go only when she cried in desperation. “That woke you up, didn’t it, riña?”
He offered her a drink from his wine cup. She was not stupid enough to mistake it for kindness, but she accepted it as if that was all it was. The bitter taste of his seed was making her retch, and unfortunately, he seemed to have noticed. The wine was a good distraction.
“You must be wondering why you. Of all the smallfolk villages for Maelrax to venture upon, why yours.” Neriña darted her eyes over his face and then went back to staring at the floor. Let him talk. He liked to talk. “A princess came by here on her journey to Blackhaven not three moons ago. Do you remember?”
At first, she could not, not for the life of her. It was as if all the events of her short life, both joyous and ill, had washed away in the aftermath of closing the door to this room. But then she found she did remember, and she almost cried in relief, because lo, her mind was still willing to work. It had not abandoned her.
“I do, my prince.”
“Red-haired, with the silver streak. The leader of your village offered her a cup of water, and it left an impression on her. As did – “ he leaned forward, and Neriña flinched. He ignored it and touched his fingers to her chin. “ – this pretty face.”
The princess was his wife. And she had gifted Neriña a bracelet of rubies. For your dowry, sweetling. Because she had learned that Neriña was a bastard, and had nothing to her name save for her looks, which would soon be allotted to her groom, who was not as beautiful as she was, but was not like some men who felt it their duty to slice the pride of a prettier wife until she fell at their feet.
“My gift to her, she gave to you,” the prince murmured.
Neriña’s brow softened. “I still have it.”
“What?”
“I still have it. I did not sell it. I am not wearing it today because it was too precious. I can get it. I can - “
And here, her youth won out over good sense. Because she still lived half in the world of morality and consequences. That things happened for a reason and could be countered with firm actions and rewarding conclusions. A world of happy endings. His desire to rape her would stop when he had back the gift his wife mistakenly handed to her.
Overcome by this belief, Neriña ran for the door.
She meant to keep running, until she got to her little hut, and found the bracelet and then she would run straight back. None of this was communicated to the prince, who only saw her leap for the exit. Just as she got to the door, his hand struck the back of her head.
Her forehead hit the wood and she slumped, unconscious.
Consciousness returned in a mangled splotch of colour. Pale violet. The sky was filled with it. A warm breeze tickled her cheek. Stalks of wheat sifted through her raven hair. A sluggishness held her hostage, like the aftermath of a lengthy nap taken at the wrong end of an afternoon.
When the light faded, the sky shrank into a pair of eyes. The stalks of wheat were fingers. And the breeze on her cheek was breath, wine-soaked and furious. He kept his voice level despite his visible emotion.
“Have you lost your mind?”
What a strange thing for you to say to me. The prince sat her up, cradled against his arm. He licked at the trickle of blood dribbling from her forehead, hesitant at first, but then he planted his lips more firmly and suckled the blood off until her skin was dewy and clean.
“I was going to fetch the bracelet, my prince,” she croaked.
“This is not about the bracelet.”
Neriña sucked in a wet sob of despair, and this appeased him some. He took it that she was sorry. He sat her up against the pillows and offered her another rich sip of wine.
“This is about you.” He pinched her nose gently, and then her ribs with much more violence.
“But-”
“Do not interrupt. My wife hates me. But she would never give away a gift of mine. Not once has she done so in the history of our marriage, and I assure you, she keeps her treasures like a crow. But you she gives the ruby bracelet to. The one I gave her on our wedding night. I had to see the recipient for myself.”
He got up and with a dancer’s grace, started to remove his clothes. There was not a shred of fat on him, all lean and hard, like salt beef. Beautiful he was, but not as beautiful as her Jon, with his coarse hands and shy smile and eyes like a puddle that had yet to be disturbed by the joyful stamp of a child.
Neriña pinched her mouth tight. Her eyes were welling up but she ignored it. If she pretended her body was not in a state of panic, then she could focus on his words. There were things to be gleaned from them. She might find a latch left open yet.
The surcoat fell away. “She was about your age when we married. Slender, frightened little thing. Her mother never told her what was to happen. Delightfully, her mother was dead by that time anyway. Vile woman. My wife put on the bracelet to please me, thinking it was enough, that the sight of my gift on her angelic wrist would soften me into forgetting our childhood grievances. As if it would force me to be – kind – to her.”
He said the word kind as if it were a character flaw.
“But of course, it was as unpleasant for her as it is for the rest of them. Always a crushing moment, for a princess to understand she is no better than livestock bred in a barn. Or a peasant girl to be blessed.” He smiled at her, companiable, like this was a pleasant discussion between equals. “She bled like any young bitch mounted too roughly by her hound. And she wept. Oh, how she wept. Tears like stuck pearls.”
Neriña’s chin wobbled into the sweaty heel of her hand. She had not blinked in several minutes to keep her own tears from leaking. But now she had to, and when they dropped free, he noticed. Every little thing he noticed. It made him preen.
“Turn over,” he told her. When she hesitantly kneeled the other way on the bed, he tsked and forced her onto her front, until she was stretched out. The dress remained on.
He climbed on top of her, still chatting. “Why do women expect more when the proof is all around them? Hm?” He knocked on her skull to coax her into the conversation with him.
“I-I do not know, my prince.”
“You don’t do that, do you?”
“No, my prince.”
“Little liar.”
“S-sometimes. I like to think the best of people. As the septon says – AAH!”
Her startled scream was cut off by the prince’s hand shoving her mouth into the pillow.
“I don’t care what your septon says.”
The pain was unlike anything she had ever felt. It wasn’t the worst – she’d broken bones before – but the sheer intensity and newness of it paralysed her. Her legs tensed up so hard, a muscle cramped. He was leaning against it, and the added discomfort made her sob even louder. He forced in the last few inches when her body refused to cooperate.
“You’re going to have to relax. Or this is going to be a lot more difficult.”
Neriña stuffed the linen of the pillow into her mouth. Drool bled into the fabric. The throbbing between her legs was pleasure, she told herself. It was pleasure. All pain was pleasure in the end. That persistent pulse centred where the body was most alive, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. And when she could not convince herself of that, she resorted to it’s nothing and slowly shifted her cramped leg to the left so he would not be resting against it quite so much. The prince took this for willingness and stroked her head like she was a cat deigning to behave.
“My wife confuses me sometimes,” he grunted.
He drew his cock out to the tip and waited for her to untense. She thought it was over. This was all there was. One horrible thrust, and it was done. Just when she lifted her head to breathe, he rammed back in. Her scream drowned out half of his next sentence.
“All women confuse me. Only because you are all so simple and yet conceive yourselves to be smarter. The breakage always happens. And yet you insist.
Thus, her virtue was taken by a prince as he talked of a wife who hated him. He kept nudging Neriña to respond whenever there was a lull. It was purposeful. He was doing it so she could not leave her body, leave him, reach a place where even his long fingers could not find her and drag her back by the pink of her intestines.
When he was done, he let her sit up again but wouldn’t permit her to shut her legs. His hand reached between them, prising at her, and she whimpered.
“Such a lovely slit. Shame you couldn’t get it wet. No matter. We’ll fix that too.” He swept up the thin stain of blood and swiped it on her cheek. And then his eyes lit up and he drew a mark on her forehead. “There, a Valyrian glyph. What’s wrong? Not feeling very talkative? Or do you think it’s already over?”
Neriña’s fingers convulsed around the fabric of her skirts. “My prince - “
But she could not form a plea, nor express her disbelief. It was as if she’d been struck around the head a second time. The wind left her, and she pressed her hands to her mouth to flatten the wail threatening to erupt.
When he saw this, the prince was not so unkind. He cooed, calling her ‘little dove’ and pulled her head into his lap with soothing strokes of his hand. “I know, I know. There, you may cry and see if it helps you feel better. I permit it.”
Neriña wanted to stop crying because he’d said it that way. But her body had had enough of playing pretend. She caved under the weight of broken hope like steel flattened against an anvil. The prince held her like a mother comforting her babe, soft kisses peppered over her rounded cheeks.
Once it was over, he raped her again.
This time, it lasted longer. She knew, because she counted the seconds as they passed. And he did not make her talk to him. He moved his hips like it was a dance, as if he wanted to see just how much he could make her stretch. Not much. And besides, she couldn’t feel anything now.
When he sensed that she was no longer responding, he notched her to his cock and held her there with a deep, thirsty groan, upon which he released inside her as he had done previously.
He let her off him, and sat back, almost proud. “I used to need longer breaks in between erections.”
Neriña heaved herself upright, eyes dropping to the mess of blood and sperm on his cock. It was pink where their fluids mixed. He offered it to her, and she felt her mouth fill with saliva, a layer of protection to help the stuff slide easily down her throat and not linger too long on her tongue.
He was content with her supping licks and did not make her swallow him whole as he had done before. He even called her a good girl and pinched her nose. He seemed to like her nose. He kept flicking it and prodding it as if it were a button on his sleeve.
“I think my wife found you pretty. Probably dreamed of you as we lay in our bed together. But she is a coward. The woman has a dragon but remains a coward. Does that kind of cowardice not upset you? Or would you be the same as her if you rode a winged beast?”
“I have never known what it is to be in the skies, my prince. I imagine I would know only once I saw the clouds beneath my feet.”
He was impressed by her answer. “You’re a sharp little thing, aren’t you? Perhaps I will take you for a ride on Maelrax. It seems only fair.”
Neriña did not dare to hope. When his last ‘pleasantry’ was over, he’d cut her open again, made her bleed. But her fingers wound around this offered thread. She pulled it just a fraction, when he feigned concern.
“Does it hurt quite badly?” he asked.
“The second time was not – not so bad.”
He stared at her, with those unnervingly pale eyes. Neriña scrambled to understand where she might have gone wrong in her prediction that he would enjoy the gentle praise.
He clapped his hands together and she jumped violently.
“We can do better than not so bad.”
He had the capacity for exquisite gentleness.
It made it worse, somehow, knowing. How soft his hand could be on her inner thigh, how gentle his kisses. He was riveted by her anatomy, as if the body of a woman had never been unveiled to him in complete nakedness before (she was naked now and the dress was a pool of blood on the floor).
But he was so much older than her so he must have seen many women. He must have "blessed" many of them too. She could not decide how old she thought he was. He had more wrinkles around his eyes when he smiled than she did. But everyone older than three and twenty was awfully old to her.
He stroked her pubic hair as if it were fine Myrish lace, working it open for a proper glimpse at the treasure it guarded. She wasn’t bleeding anymore. But it still felt sore. The wounds would rip open the moment he was inside her again, which he had assured her he soon would be.
“You are not permitted to lie back and think of Westeros, Neriña. I want you to be present. This is your first step into an unknown world. If you aren’t minding the lesson, how will you learn?”
And then he’d pinched her nipple and twisted until she squealed into the trap of his grinning mouth.
She was attempting fluidity. Or some form of it anyway, so he would not chide her for how rigid she was. But when his fingers danced over a particular point of her cunt – just at the very top – she tensed and her breath came short. He smiled, as if he knew.
“Hair back off your shoulders. It hides your beauty.”
Neriña obliged, letting it tipple back like liquid ink onto the bed.
When he put his head between her legs, she eyed the sword resting against the redwood chest. It was still in its scabbard. She had never swung a sword before, but if she threatened him with it, how would he disarm her? Or if she drove it into his throat, and just ran, ran until she was in Dorne somehow, all those hundreds of miles. But it was quite a way from here in the Marches. And the dragon – oh, of course, the dragon – would rear up at the rendering of its rider’s bond. The grief would drive it mad, and it would burn everything.
It cannot be him that dies.
“Oh!” Her thought was interrupted by a light cry of surprise.
He’d just run his tongue in a hungry line from the bottom of her opening to the top. The prince made a quiet noise of enjoyment in his throat. There was a savouring quality to the way he sucked the blood on her hair, mixed with the sweat, and even his own spent. As if it tasted good to him. It had not to her when she’d cleaned it up off his cock.
“Ah, riña,” he murmured, half-absent.
And then he pinched the top of her pubis with his fingers, pulling her folds taut. It focused her pulse at the very top. The same spot that had made her cry out oh when he licked it. He ran his lips over it, a chaste kiss, and she started to tense up for altogether different reasons. He circled it with the tip of his tongue, feather-light. Light grunts of pleasure, as if tasting her was enough to stir his belly.
Neriña glanced at the sword again, her panic growing. She wished what he was doing was as painful as the rest. It clouded her mind far too much. Every lick increased the pressure until she squirmed and gasped in her effort not to make a sound. The shame of it being heard through the door. She did not want this. She did not want this. They would all think she did. All the other girls – the married ones – had said it hurt at first, but then it was bearable and then it stopped. No one had said anything about moaning.
“Oh, please stop!” she sobbed.
The prince closed his mouth around the little nub. Now she struggled. She wept and thrashed and pleaded. He gripped her thigh and twisted his fingers into the flesh until the pain distracted her and she went slack. Neriña caught up the pillow and buried her face into it so no more sounds would be made. He took that too.
“Behave, or I’ll bite,” he warned, and she believed he would. Those teeth would sink right into her cunt and tear it to shreds.
The malice of his ministrations continued. He was no longer licking. It was a feeding frenzy. He ate and moaned like a man who had not had the pleasure of supping on anything but the most basic fare for years. The warmth turned to a rollicking heat. She felt his teeth, but only the most delicious graze, to shock her and make her start which he enjoyed immensely. He ran his fingers down to her opening, and tickled inside the swollen, abused rim as his tongue lapped at her bud. Hungry little kisses to it, suckling, until her vision faltered.
No was the only word she heard herself whisper. And then a whimper, a cry, a moan of it. If he did stop – oh, she wasn’t sure. Her body was diverting from her mind again. It was refusing to listen. Her spine arched off the bed, and the pulse between her legs jumped stronger than the one in her chest. All the blood rushed south, as if he was drawing it to him. He meant to feed on her essence until she was dead.
This was murder, not rape, it was murder. She was going to die.
But even this feeling stopped, just as the pain had. It was equally horrible, because she knew not what it was. She would much rather the pinching and the bruising and the tearing. Her body had some control there. Here it shuddered and twitched and convulsed as if a demon had possessed it. She sank back down with a plaintive cry for the gods, and he crawled up her body, a scaled creature like his mount, jagged teeth and lips tinged with blood. “Do you feel that wetness? That’s arousal. You’re a woman now.”
He gave her more time to recover from this than he had on the two previous occasions. She curled up - knees to her chest, ankles crossed so she was concealed - and tried to ignore the fluids cooling on her skin. She wanted to scrub them off and her skin with it.
The prince poured himself another cup of wine. No separate cup for her. He fed her from his own as if she were a child that could not manage a serving alone. A woman grown, arousal, but a child. Two contradictions that did not make any sense to her, but it gave him visible satisfaction to take the cup back when she drank too deeply.
He was lying beside her now, cock resting half-soft against his thigh. She kept an eye on it, as if it were a creature that might attack her if she turned her back.
“Tell me about your parents,” he said.
She could lie, deny him this further violation. – why must he know – but he could easily verify it by asking one of the villagers who would find no reason to tell a falsehood to a prince.
“I am a bastard, like almost everyone that lives here. My father was an Uller.”
This riled an interest. He turned on his side, head propped up on an elbow. “So, you’re part Uller. Part savage, part dragonslayer.”
“I have never slain a dragon,” was her meek rejoinder.
“But your ancestors have. It’s in your blood. Doing something so calamitous, it changes the nature of one’s flesh. The gods were kind to bring me to you. It is vengeance they seek, for the crimes committed by your forbears against mine.”
Neriña did not know what the prince spoke of. He told her that one of the conqueror’s wives, Rhaenys, had fallen at Hellholt and was no doubt tortured endlessly before she was put to death and her body disposed of. There was a strange light in his eye when he mentioned his ancestor’s potential suffering.
“I can only imagine how eager your forefathers were to taint her Valyrian blood,” he said. “Do you think perhaps the Ullers are part-animal? I have always heard it to be so. To enjoy such vile acts.”
Neriña forced herself not to look at him. He would see it laid bare in her eyes, the reflection of what he was, not what he believed himself to be. And then it really sank in that this was not a rape to him at all, but truly a blessing. He was not attempting to mock her with the phrase, he meant it.
“And who was your mother? A Martell? Are you perhaps a secret princess?” he laughed carelessly.
“My mother was a washerwoman. My father raped her. And when I was born, she tried to burn me alive but my baba – my grandfather – he saved me. He took me here to this village and left her behind. I do not know where.” And now her baba was dead, and she had no one until Jon’s family offered the match in honour of him.
Where that would end up now, she did not know. Perhaps they would be hopeful the Targaryen prince had planted a dragonseed. But her husband would never look at her the same. She was sure of it. Men did not like to be supplanted, or have their pride besmirched, not even those of the smallfolk. Jon would never beat her for the prince’s crime against her. But he would not want to touch her again, would he?
The prince said nothing. He stroked her hair. It was not comfort. His cock had fully hardened in the course of listening to her story.
This time, he made her lie on her back, and this was unbearable already because she could no longer close her eyes. As he thrust into her, he noticed her detached focus on his scar.
“Kiss it,” he told her, and she did as she was told.
It was a twisted ridge of skin, rougher than it looked against the petal-soft curiosity of her mouth.
“A man who looked very much like your husband gave it to me. A giant dullard with blonde hair. Is your husband a dullard?”
She shook her head, because she forgot she was meant to give him answers he’d want to hear. He punished her with a few brutal snaps of his hips. Once he made her cry out in pain, he relented again. Down he came on his forearm, as if he was tiring. But the rhythm remained steady.
He was more concerned with looking into her eyes, drinking up every ounce of will he found there. It burned at him. Even when her face clouded over, he could feel her will burning underneath. It was why he had not yet stopped.
This was a siege, and her enemy lord was patient, balancing his battering ram at the doors of her castle, and relishing the clanged echo of each strike. An inch closer to breaking her. She was high up on the battlements, watching as her castle was attacked, too powerless to do anything, but still out of his reach, still not his.
What madness had stirred him to come here, three moons after his wife’s visit? An argument with her? Or was he bored? Perhaps the ruby bracelet meant more than Neriña knew. A relic from his own lady mother, or a grandmother even. She tried to provide reason to this evil he was doing but found herself lost.
She could not conceive of even wanting to hurt another person. Not until tonight.
“Oh - there she is – she’s alive –“ the prince breathed, as a particularly strong gyration of his hips made her twitch and grab his biceps. When she let go, he urged her to hold onto them again. She obeyed, but it was not like the first time, a genuine fidget of alarmed ecstasy.
Clearly frustrated she was not playing the part, he kissed her. A crash of his lips onto hers, teeth flattened behind throbbing skin. Neriña tried to kiss him back. If that was what he wanted, then he could have it. She had kissed her groom before. She knew what to do. But the prince’s mouth was bitter, and besides, she didn’t like the taste of him underneath it the way she liked her husband’s. There was something in Jon’s mouth she could not find in the prince’s. Some sweeter stroke of love and affection he bore her perhaps. He was not a battering ram waiting to break her.
“Your mouth, your lovely mouth,” the prince muttered, and Neriña wept because it was not the words, it was the way he said them, and it frightened her.
He mistook it – or chose to mistake it – for overwhelmed pleasure. It softened him a little. He hooked her thigh around his hip and a hand reached down to swirl his fingers over the button of flesh in the shape of glyphs she did not know. “Tell me what that feels like.”
She tried to come up with something on the spot that would pass. “Like - like flying.”
“And yet you’ve never flown. Such imagination. What about now?” He pinched it, and she squealed and wriggled. He laughed and his weight came down on her so that she was pinned.
The thrusting picked up. It seemed the expressiveness of her reactions had stroked some need to keep pleasing her. He was smiling when he kissed her again. Her cunt squelched wetly with every deep slide of his cock, and his drool flooded her mouth. There was so much of it.
Neriña swallowed where she could, trying not to choke. It was beginning to feel good again. She hated it.
When he told her to call him Aerion she almost kicked her feet in misery. But then her insides would clench, and that small movement was enough to imprint every ridge of his cock against her walls with twice the force and so really, she was trapped.
She began to think of her mother. She had not thought of her mother in a long, long time. What a horrible moment to do it, a woman whose face she could not even remember. Was it like this for her? This build up of cruelty? Only for it to be crowned with sensations that broke her body to its will, but left her mind screaming in the confines of a cage? Had Neriña’s father licked her and kissed her until she flew? Or had he only done the first act, the brutal penetration, and satisfied with the blood on his cock, left the crying girl to her laundry?
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. The prince drank them up, his fingers clawing at her scalp hard enough to make it bleed. Neriña bit down on his lip in answer. She thought he would wrench himself away and rip the wound open. Small victories. But he shuddered and pressed closer, encouraging her to keep her teeth sunk in. She let go of her own accord when the possession returned.
Fierce and hot, rising in dizzying waves, until she felt that she might sneeze, but it was not a sneeze, and it was not her bladder that wanted to release. Something else, something so much better. Sweat stuck their bellies together. Neriña’s scream pushed at the tight seal of her lips. She didn’t want to let it out. But he was kissing her again, jamming her jaw open.
She clawed at his scar with a furious swipe of her hand.
The prince roared with anger. His hand slammed her neck and squeezed until she turned red. But it did nothing to stop the waves of heat in her cunt. They amplified. Everything turned razor sharp, the precise consistency of a raindrop balanced on one’s fingertip. When it shattered, so did she, so did he.
He collapsed on top of her and she pulled in air like she was dying.
The scratch on his scar was not taken as well as the bite to his lip.
Once their bodies separated again, he slapped her twice as hard, several times, until her face felt like a fresh bruise. And then he prised her jaw open with his whole hand, and snarled -
“Try that again! I dare you!”
“Mmmsoohhyrrr - “ she sobbed a mangled apology around the obstruction.
“You shitty little whore!” Another slap. “I’ll have your man’s severed cock - “ slap “ - to stopper your cunt – “ slap “ – for when I’m not fucking you!”
Neriña sobbed with a kind of demented anguish that went past any emotion she had ever experienced.
When he finally pulled his hand from her slack mouth, It came away soaked in spit, strings of it tying them together. The prince touched those same fingers to his scar. The skin hadn’t even broken. He tongued the inside of his cheek and looked almost apologetic, if that was an expression that could ever fit the contours of his face.
As consolation, he let her ride him instead. Let. He dragged her on top of him and grabbed her buttocks because she was limp, and then guided her onto his stiff flesh. The whole time, she whimpered and sobbed, until he gave her an impatient rut of his hips to make her cooperate. His thumb teased her nub to keep her slick. That was meant to be the kindness on his part.
She had never experienced her body like this. Wet and soft and easily violated. It made her frightened of it, as if her whole life, she had slept next to a stranger and not really known who they were. Strange that she could conceive of a knife breaching her flesh, the immediacy of a sword, or a hammer smashing bone. But this was a new injury she could not yet reconcile with. And how easily it was done, how repeatedly, how completely.
On top, there was no squeezing to try and keep him out. Her weight did half the work. Once he was inside, her planted his feet on the mattress and lifted her, laughing when she scrunched her eyes shut and caught his hand for balance.
“Doesn’t that feel good, riña?” he crooned.
Neriña nodded, face scrunched up. She let out the air she was holding when he mouthed at her breast. Here, she slipped her mind and he did not notice.
Out it flew, like a caged bird, and wandered across the ceiling. The sounds from the bed rang in her ears – was that really her, those sticky little moans – but she could cast them aside. The colour of the sky was still pitch black. This would end by dawn. But there was not even a kiss of blue yet.
He’s asking you a question.
She scrambled back, and when she came to, their mouths were pressed together but they were not kissing. He wanted to know how she felt.
“Full,” she mumbled.
“Full?” Condescension, teasing, all sweet intimacy they did not share. “You can do better than that.”
“Mmmf - full - “ she repeated and leaned away so that he would not hold her so tight, but the squirming was not enough to disguise her intention. One powerful arm wrenched her back and her teeth gnashed her tongue when her chin knocked his head. Blood swilled against her cheeks with the consistency of wine.
“You’ve got it all inside you from this position. That is why you’re full.”
“Gods - mercy - “
He repeated her words in mockery, nuzzling her cheek. "Gods – mercy - “
And then he threw her face down onto the bed and fucked her with as much violence as the first time.
She had guessed rightly before. Signs of weakness would not appeal to his good conscience, nor the soft parts of him reserved for those of his blood, the ones he might claim to love. Her weakness made his cock harder and filled him with more lust than could be spent inside her young body of a night.
Neriña bit her abused tongue, determined to chew it off if it tried to beg again.
She lost count of how many more times. He would not tire. And when, inevitably, her crying would not stop, he let it rile him up to greater violence, worser cruelties. There was a moment when he wished to breach another entrance, one she had not fathomed was made for anything to go inside. The very idea made her lightheaded and she’d fallen into a dead faint. He left her unconscious, and simply did as he chose, until she awoke to a new and terrible kind of injury. The crying began again. He cradled her in his arms and let her sob into his chest, her limbs dangling limp across his legs, a mummer’s puppet brought to life. The prince could sense that the fight was almost gone from her.
It took only one more – his fingers easing into her cunt, as she sobbed into his mouth – for her spirit to break entirely.
It was over.
Neriña did not recall when or how she stumbled out of that room.
Those legs she stood on were not hers. They were shaking to the point of severe exhaustion. Every inch of her was. The pain was indescribable. It did not make any logical sense that she had the strength to leave on her own two feet. But she did, and the prince slept behind her because it no longer concerned him what she did or where she went. He had exacted the price of a ruby bracelet and his wife’s carelessness in gifting it to her. He was fast asleep.
Around her was Jon’s cloak that she had worn over her dress when she’d followed the prince to Abaran’s house. The corridors were empty, glazed in enamelled light. It was too silent, even for the early hour. Feeling a surge of panic – she imagined somehow that the dragon had slaughtered everyone, and she had not heard it whilst trapped in her rapist’s tender arms – Neriña darted for the door. The grassy streets were empty. Every hut dark. The whole place had been constructed in less than a month. Everyone was adept at some skill or other. They could get up and leave whenever they chose –
And as Neriña walked past each home, she realised that they had.
Everyone.
The wedding pole was still laden with flowers, but the fire was extinguished. The well had run dry recently, and there had been talks of moving onto the next place. The perfect time was found. The herd had wandered off and left behind the wounded. She understood why they’d done it. A bizarre sort of scrutiny would find them if one of their own was known to have been chosen for a first night rite. If she were to bear the child of a dragonriding prince, she would forever be a beacon for trouble. They would not be able to remain free as they are now.
She did not blame them – she tried not to – but the pain –
It was –
Let it go quiet.
The numbness began to creep back in.
She went by her own home, thinking perhaps that they might have also taken –
The ruby bracelet is still there. And next to it, a letter from Jon – impressively, he can read and write, and she cannot, but he was going to teach her once they were married. Neriña pressed it to her heart and burst into tears. She did not need to know what was written there to know what he meant. He’d pressed a flower into it. He loved her still, but she knew they would not see each other again.
With the bracelet around her wrist, and the letter tied into a small pouch on a string around her neck, Neriña did not bother with putting any other clothes on. The cloak was her only protection from the elements. Dried blood and crusted seed chafed together on her inner thigh.
She wandered like a ghost across the flattened grass, out past the boundary of the village. The moon was a lanced boil in the sky. His dragon was curled up at the far end of the meadow. The stink of it reached her on the back of a breeze, the same stink that had been all over the prince, the stink that was now on her.
Neriña limped to it slowly. It opened one eye, alert as any cat that had ever pretended to sleep. She was hoping it would rear up. But it did not. It just watched her with the same indifference as its rider, because she was no threat to it at all.
She stood before it and dropped the cloak. Bare naked in the pearl light, she stretched her arms out. Kill me. A dragon’s only instinct was destruction. And here she was, taunting it.
Maelrax leaned his great head forward with a deep sniff. She saw the flare of his nostrils, the whistling shriek of air he drew in. It dissolved into a snuffle of a sound. He sniffed her again, pupils dilated. It can smell him all over me. Out came the red, heavy meat of its tongue, and ran up the length of her. Marked, or greeted, she was not sure.
It did not matter.
Maelrax would not kill her. No, that would be easy. And so far, events had proven, nothing was permitted to be easy for her.
Some spirit overcame over, urging her to ignore the pain and run. So she did. Neriña ran back to the village, hair flying behind her in a tangled web. There was something in Abaran’s house waiting for her.
Over the hearth in the dining hall, held up by brackets, was a long, weighty spear.
This will do.
Maelrax ignored her return. He could not smell the poison on the tip of the spear. He only smelled his beloved, the prince. The whispered thud of feet hitting the grass were of no great concern either,
Only at the last moment, when he opened his scarlet eye, did he finally see the flying leap of her charge.
A matter of aim and seconds.
Perhaps she really was an Uller by nature. Because there was no such calmness when the prince was on top of her. There was no such composure when he kissed her, made her call him by his name, as if they were lovers, and she was his wife, not Jon’s.
Her mind was blank and her body acted on her behalf better than it had against the prince. As if it knew a piece of him resided in this dragon, that the violation would be the same.
The spear drove in with a strength that was not hers. Where it came from, she did not know. A dragon’s eye, as it turned out, was as soft and slick as a cunt. Just as easily penetrated.
Its scream was worse than any of hers had been. She wished she could stand there and hear it forever, until it was no longer a threat to her and everyone she loved. Until its rider could not rape her and fly away, as if nothing of import had happened.
The dragon was in such pain, and the poison worked so fast, it had no time to go on the attack. The stamp of its feet, and a single plume of fire lit up the field. But the girl was already running towards the woods, cloak whipping around her naked form, her only worldly possession left. That, and the ruby bracelet.
She ran and ran and ran and ran.
She would not go looking for the villagers.
They would not suffer in her stead.
Behind her, the screams began to die out.
Soon, a new one would pick up, but she would be too far away to hear him.
Nine moons went by, and the poisoned lump of meat finally fell out of her.
She cleaned it – for there was no one to help her – and sponged off its scrunched eyes and wiped its silver hair clean of blood. Neriña meant to pick it up and throw it into the fire the moment she had it. There was a bonfire burning already, prepared especially for this task. No amount of digging inside herself with implements had forced the thing out in the early months. It was vicious, like its father.
But it sobbed now, bleating like a tired lamb, and she remembered how she had sounded the same during its conception. Maybe her sadness had taken a form, and this was it. Sadness was not so destructive as anger and hate. It was just something that needed to be nuzzled at until it quietened.
Two lilac eyes, and a head of white hair, with a single raven lock at the front of its head.
The only imperfection was the cock. She wished that it would at least be born a girl. If she cut the little thing off now, it would screech and her head already hurt.
“Hush now,” she told it, patting its hair.
Strangely, that was all it needed to quieten. It was not very demanding. The cord still tied them both together, but she was too tired to cut at it with her knife. Neriña lifted it into her arms instead, holding it to her chest, where it mouthed uselessly at her nipple. She was forced to guide it until it latched on, but then it calmed, and all was quiet. A little lullaby burbled in the back of her throat.
She would kill it later.
Yes, that was what she would do.
There was plenty of time.