Chapter Text
Life dances around her in swirling chaos. Impossible to pin down, impossible to join.
The heady press of bodies and free flowing wine stacks against the edges of the hall, pushing against the shadows until there is nowhere to hide. No room to simply breathe.
Everything is too much. Too hot. Too loud. Too close.
Too giddy with its southerness.
It’s as if three months of peace have been unleashed in a single night. The relief is palpable in the air, in the careless movement of bodies, in the shriek of voices above the minstrels. As if to say, look! We’re still alive!
There’s a carelessness to it that strikes her northern sensibilities. A lack of control that makes her grasp for her own. And it’s not that the north do not celebrate – the gods know Winterfell’s hall on feast day is not orderly – but there is a momentum to the revelry here that sets her on edge. As if it is in uncontrolled freefall.
Like she doesn’t know the next steps in the dance.
Anything could happen next. Anything might.
She came on a king’s summons with her father and brother, but wolves have never done well in the south. The predators down here are different, the food chain rearranged. What if she has become the prey?
It is that unease that sits beneath her skin now, waiting. Sweating.
Even her summer wool and fine new cotton dresses can’t wick away the sweat and gossip fast enough to keep her sane. She wishes for the coolness of Winterfell’s crypts, the peace in the godswood, and the crisp breeze off freshly fallen snow.
She wishes to be anywhere but the Red Keep.
Instead, Lessa stands alone beneath a nameless skull, waiting for the inevitable. The flickering light from the sconces casts a shadow of the dragon’s maw over her own silhouette like a heavy-handed allegory. It is one of the larger skulls hung in the hall, its’ curling fangs almost the length of her forearm, mouth open wide and threatening flame. Promising fire and death.
What is the bite of a wolf when compared with a dragon?
Alive, she thinks. The wolves are still alive to bite.
It’s a flippant comment she keeps behind her teeth – the kind she’d easily whisper to her eldest brother in the safety of Winterfell’s walls and her father’s halls. Not in the heart of the dragon’s den.
Still, the Targaryens may no longer have their dragons, but that does not mean they are a family who have forgotten the power of image. It is the only power they have left.
Dragon skulls hang on the walls and above the throne. Snarling teeth and threaded flame leap from every tapestry. Even the banister of the gallery above twists with the wreathing body of a wingless serpent. The three headed dragon stares back at her from every banner, from the heraldry of every servant.
A glaring reminder of what once was.
It might simply be the practical northerner in her, but she does not see the advantage of boasting about what has been lost.
“Sister.” A familiar figure cuts against the backdrop of courtiers to stand by the wall with her. “Running away already?”
Lessa shakes her head, a denial forming and then dying on her lips before it can fall. Lies down here must be carefully spent, and wasting them on Nathen would be an insult to them both.
“Simply catching my breath before the dancing begins.”
Five weeks at court have impressed on her the danger and expectation around etiquette. Dancing is never a simple pleasure, but a battlefield to be entered only when prepared.
Nathen grimaces in agreement. “I believe father has already promised me to a Tyrell girl.”
“The stakes?”
“A contract for winter barley.”
Lessa snorts, glad there are no minor lordlings around to hear. “If Winterfell is reliant on you to feed us come the season change, we’ll all starve.”
“My footwork isn’t that bad.”
“Septa Thunella would disagree.”
“Septa Thunella learnt how to dance before mother was presented to court. Her opinion hardly counts.”
Any further argument is stifled by the threat of company.
Across the cavernous banqueting hall – Lessa still can’t understand how one room can be larger than most lord’s keeps – she sees the tide of people shift, almost unconsciously, around two men in Targaryen black.
“Let us hope for everyone’s sake that my footwork is better than yours, brother.”
She watches the elder brother scan the room with a practiced gaze, before his eyes find hers with alarming precision. Lessa finds her spine stiffening in response to being his sole focus of attention, even if barely for a second. There’s a weight to his gaze she’s not come to expect in the South. An unexpectedly frank intent. It does not make her feel anything as vulnerable as prey, but her hackles rise of their own volition.
Her nods at her in acknowledgement, turning his body slightly to let his brother pass before him as they make their way over.
“Brace,” Lessa manages, before the princes are upon them.
~*~
“Fuck me,” Maekar curses the second they are out of earshot of their father. “Fuck this.”
Baelor doesn’t chastise him, but does make the effort to bite back a grin.
“Does he really think dancing is the way to keep the Seven Kingdoms united?” Maekar continues.
It’s not a statement that invites a serious answer and Baelor doesn’t give it one, letting his brother vent his frustrations into the only safe outlet he has left. Redgrass is three months behind them and with it the object of Maekar’s focused ire is gone. Directionless, he bites at the hands that try to calm him.
Baelor decided long ago there was no point in trying.
“Let’s hope it’s only dancing father has in mind.”
That makes Maekar stop, feet rooted to the flagstone in the middle of dancing couples. They don’t dare voice their protest, but glare with venom at the back of his head as they step around.
“Speak frankly,” he says, with a sharp switch to High Valyrian.
There’s a clear note of warning in his brother’s tone, but Baelor ignores it the way nobody else would dare.
“I believe marriages are also a way to keep the Kingdoms united,” Baelor offers, voice purposefully guileless in the way that so irritates his brother.
“Has he said anything to you?”
“Despite all belief to the contrary, father rarely tells me his mind until he’s decided on it.”
“But you have your suspicions,” Maekar pushes.
His brother is smart. He has an acumen for strategy to rival Baelor’s own – both on the battlefield and in the political minefield of court – even if he doesn’t always have the ease with people to back it up. He will surely have thought about the reasons his father summoned the Warden of the North to court so shortly after the realm fractured on Redgrass Field.
“The North were slow to provide men when Blackfyre rebelled. While they have always been loyal to the Iron Throne, they have little cause to rush South and fight battles on our behalf. They thrive in their unique position of neglect. If father wishes to change that, then he has to bind them to the South more permanently to ensure their loyalty in the future.”
Their father is a man who has united kingdoms and achieved the improbable in bringing Dorne into the fold. Baelor and his brothers are living testament to that. Now the King seeks the impossible in taming the North.
“Yes,” Maekar agrees impatiently. “But why am I the one who has to suffer for it?”
“You tell me,” he replies. In the same way he would when they were younger and Maekar would ask questions where the answers only needed a little coaxing to be clear.
Maekar huffs at the patronage. “It has to be a prince if we want the North to take us seriously, but father couldn’t waste his heir – the North might be big, but it doesn’t have nearly enough men to be that important. Not with the threat of dissent so close to home. Rhaegal is already married, of course. But Aerys, there’s no reason he cannot marry the Stark girl, surely?”
“The North respects strength,” Baelor answers easily. “Something you have but Aerys does not. You forget Lord Stark has to agree to any betrothal, and he is not a man to see his pack easily divided.”
“Surely a prince is a prince. Would Stark not rather have a second son than a fourth for his only daughter?”
It’s not Baelor that Maekar is trying to convince.
“Maybe he wants Summerhall for her? That is something you have that Aerys does not.”
Maekar stiffens at the acknowledgement of his newly bestowed burden.
“And,” Baelor adds, tone all teasing, “Summerhall is in need of a lady.”
Maekar only glares. “Do not remind me.”
“Come brother,” Baelor claps him on the shoulder. “Let’s find your runaway bride. It seems she’s as eager for this dance as you are.”
He makes his way through the hall, searching for the telltale sign of Stark colour, and finds it with a pair of guarded pale grey eyes.
She stands with her brother, deep in conversation beneath Dreamfyre’s onyx-black skull, both of them looking as if they’ve stepped out of Maester Caswell’s genealogy tomes. They have the same steel-grey eyes and dark brown hair, the same angular bluntness of Stark features and identical frowns of concentration. As if Lord Stark had sat down and planned order when conceiving his children, the way he goes about everything else.
They even scan the hall in the same way, cataloguing everything before them. He gets the distinct impression they find everything they see wanting.
Both he and Maekar included.
Still, they are not similar everywhere. The boy is a head taller, his shoulders just growing into manhood, his hair short but unruly. The girl’s curls around her ears where it has escaped the taming of its crown of braids, and she holds herself in that careful way of young women weary of court. Those that have something to prove without knowing what or why, and so choose to find it distasteful anyway.
Her dress is simple and well cut, a pale grey with small autumn leaves picked out in hues of gold and orange around draped cuffs. Undeniably a court dress, but the collar is too high and it’s not nearly ostentatious enough to be considered fashionable. The only ornament she wears is silver pearl around her neck. Baelor gets the distinct impression she argued heavily with her southern seamstress, determined not to let them remake her in their image.
“Over there,” he says, and gestures for his brother to lead the way.
It is not him required for this dance. He is merely here to make sure Maekar doesn’t find an excuse to shirk his duty.
“Lord Nathen, Lady Alessa,” Baelor greets with a small bow when Maekar does not.
His brother’s sour face is as much an insult as his lack of manners. Perhaps it is best Baelor accompanied him in this. It would not do to offend the North in front of the entire court.
“Your graces.”
Nathen Stark is a man of twenty-two years and his father’s second son. Baelor has spent five weeks in council with him and his father, trying to tie the threads of the Crown closer to the North with grain and ships. For nearly all five of those weeks, Lord Stark has worn the same carefully blank, assessing stare that his son gives now.
It reminds him of a wolf; threatened, but not yet choosing to bare its teeth.
In contrast, his daughter’s countenance has not yet learned that discretion. There’s a threat in her eye that’s directed almost entirely at Maekar, like he’s the source of her current problems and she’s assessing how best he should be approached.
His brother doesn’t seem to know what to do with that.
“I believe the King has commanded we are to dance,” Maekar says, as blunt as ever.
Baelor hides a wince. “It’s traditional to let the previous set finish, before joining the floor, brother.”
Maekar glares at him. Lady Alessa glances between them, quiet in her judgement, and Baelor doesn’t care to know what she sees.
He can imagine it from her perspective – and he tries to, for the sake of the Kingdom he works to protect. Two foreign, southern princes, safe in the comfort of their own court. Their father having commanded the wolf into the dragon’s den, entirely for his own designs. Now manoeuvring them about like convenient pieces on a board, for the sake of the appearance of North-South unity, uncaring of the opinion of the pieces themselves.
It’s an image his brother decidedly isn’t helping.
Maekar glances up at Dreamfyre, as if asking her for strength to save him from the company of lesser lords.
“It’s over faster if you join in after the set has started,” his brother mutters unsubtly beneath his breath.
“Forgive my brother,” Baelor finds himself saying, not for the first time. “He forgets himself.”
Lady Alessa dips her head in acknowledgement. “Duty chafes,” she says simply.
Her accent, like her brother’s, is saturated by the North. Softened into something decidedly out of place amidst the sharp tongues of his father’s court.
Maekar startles at the implication that he neglects his duty, the words cutting like a carefully placed barb. Baelor bites back a grin. The wolf hasn’t bared its teeth, not yet, but it has flashed a reminder of what lies beneath.
Maekar opens his mouth, no doubt a florid rebuttal on the tip of his tongue. Baelor doesn’t think anyone has ever questioned Maekar’s sense of duty before, least of all a lady of the court. By occupational hazard, both princes are usually greeted with the simpering agreement of their lessers. And Baelor greatly wants to hear what his brother thinks of the challenge, but he is also conscious of the unsubtle eyes around them. Wolf and dragon have to be seen to be in agreement.
Appearance is everything. His father has been clear enough on that.
“It does my Lady. We rise to it anyway,” he cuts Maekar off.
She looks at him then, gaze sweeping in frank assessment. “And what is your duty here, your grace?”
“To stop my brother hindering the peace of the realm.” He allows mirth to colour his words, in small acknowledgement he may have already failed there.
“Your brother needs support to ask a lady to dance?”
“Do you not agree?”
Maekar’s glare intensifies with betrayal as Lord Nathen barks a laugh that has those around them starting in surprise. Lady Alessa allows a small smile, brief and fleeting.
“Perhaps,” she says. “But since you are clearly the more duty-bound of the two, maybe it is you who should do the dancing?”
~*~
Sweat beads down her spine, an itch decorum won’t allow her to scratch. The humidity of the hall pricks at her scalp, and she can feel the placement of every pin in her hair. Even the fitting of her dress irritates her, pulling tight across her shoulders to enhance her silhouette.
For weeks she’s held her tongue and watched her words, performing her duties as a devoted daughter of the North with every scraped curtsey and high luncheon.
She’s a highborn lady, it is her lot in life to sooth the ripples cast into the peace of the realm by the actions of men. Her father and brother fight across trade tables with terse words and veiled threats, and she will be there afterwards to soothe offended sensibilities with polite smiles and garden walks. That is the way of the world. Both roles are essential to the stability of the North, and she has never complained about the gap of lady of Winterfell she had to step in to fill after her mother’s death.
Not once.
Duty chafes, after all. But we rise to it anyway.
So if she must dance with princes and dip her curtsey almost to a bent knee to soothe the sensibilities of the Southron court and protect the stability of the North, then so be it. But she is of the North, and her words don’t come honeyed.
She will not be dismissed by a fourth son of the throne. If the King wants wolf and dragon to dance together, then she will be the one to dictate the terms. And she flatly refuses to dance with someone who clearly feels a great amount of self-pity about having to stand up with her.
There’s a brief flash of surprise in Prince Baelor’s eyes. Well bred ladies do not ask men they are not acquainted with to dance. But he hides his true thoughts well, behind the practiced smile of diplomacy as he turns to his brother.
“Only if my brother has no objections?”
“No,” Prince Maekar replies tersely, with the look of a man who is unsure how the conversation has managed to get away from him.
“Then it is as the Lady wills.” Prince Baelor offers her his arm.
He is the embodiment of well-trained manners in every way his brother is not as he guides her to the edge of the dance floor and they wait for the previous set to finish. She finds herself assessing him from the corner of her eye as she pretends to watch the dancing couples. He stands, posture straight but not rigid, comfortable in the space he inhabits. She is envious of that.
“I fear we have left two people incapable of small talk in each other’s company,” Lessa says to fill the silence, conscious of the hungry eyes watching them unabashedly.
He smiles in agreement, turning from the dance to give her his full attention. In return she gives him hers.
“It is a skill my brother has need to practice, and I won’t get in the way of his education.”
“Do you spend much of your time apologising for your brother?”
She is, perhaps, being far too familiar with a prince of the realm. Far to assuming on his polite manners. But they had been acting like brothers, not princes, and it had humanised them in a way she hadn’t anticipated of dragons.
For all the weeks she’s spent in court, this is her first meeting with a member of the royal family. Everything she knows – from histories to gossip – she finds herself weighing against the man at her side.
Baelor Breakspear. Heir to the Seven Kingdoms. Prince of Dragonstone. The Hammer, champion of Redgrass Field.
A man with a formidable reputation, and yet the word that so often lingers in his wake is kind.
“More than is proper,” he replies. “But he only just seven and ten. He has time to learn patience yet.”
There is unmistakable fondness there. Devoted brother, she finds herself adding to his titles.
In the gallery, the minstrels come to a swelling finale and the dance finishes. Some pairs make straight for the edge of the floor while others mill, waiting for the next set.
“Come,” the Prince says.
He takes her hand in his, palm up so her fingers rest gently on top, as he leads her to the middle of the floor. A lord in a heavy doublet and his lady in matching green silk make way to give them centre stage without question, only deference.
They stand across from each other in the centre of the hall, surrounded by the halo of candlelight from its edges and the hundreds of eyes fixed on them from the shadow of the eaves. Even the couples that file in around them give them more space. It feels an instinctive choice, rather than a measured one. They see the crown prince and fold around his presence, because that is what it commands without asking. And she has associated herself with it.
Lessa has, she realises somewhat belatedly, made a statement she perhaps did not intend to.
If she had stood with Maekar, it would have been a declaration. Of the unity between the North and South, a sign that the kingdoms had not fractured so much on Redgrass Field that the sons and daughters from opposite ends of Westeros could not still meet. That the King valued the North, and that the wolf had not forsaken the dragon. A carefully politicked dance of loyalty, frank before the realm.
But she stands with Baelor, and that is a spectacle. He is the crown prince, the future shoulders that will carry the hard-earned peace of Redgrass forwards with whatever momentum he can summon. He does not dance with ladies of the court before the King as a display of loyalty. That is what spare sons are for. The heir dances for the promise of alliances.
She realises her grave mistake then, in her desperate grab for control over her situation. Sees the implication she has created. That the King is favouring the North, building the promise of something more. Lessa does not think the Dragon Court can currently afford such an implication. The North did not fight on Redgrass field, after all, and for that resentment remains.
The North survives because it allows itself to be forgotten by the South. Lessa has just sparked an interest in it that may as well breathe dragonfire over snow.
Something must show on her face.
“Is everything alright?”
“I fear I have just picked the wrong battle.”
He does not say it is only a dance. He knows better. And yet he agreed to it, must have realised the implication long before she did, and allowed it to happen anyway.
“It is too late to run from this particular battle,” he says softly.
If this is a battle, then dancing with Prince Maekar would have barely been a scrap in the training yard.
The music starts then, building up into a melody. Partners bow and curtsey, and Lessa finds herself falling back onto the safety of decorum to avoid the urge to glance at the hightable where she knows her father and the King will be watching. Where the spindle-sharp outline of the Iron Throne towers above the hall.
Her father will be furious. Only the gods know what the King is thinking.
The dance itself is simple enough and she focuses on that. It’s not done with the lively expression of life it would be in Winterfell, but there is a familiarity to the steps and in that there’s safety.
They’d given her a septa when she’d first arrived, who had spent the first week of her time in King’s Landing reshaping her image into something presentable to court: shoring up her footwork, preparing her wardrobe, assessing her needlework, her knowledge of heraldry and history. Ensuring she would not embarrass herself.
She’d been resentful of the influence at the time, trying to keep her sense of self in a strange land. Now she is only grateful for the layer of armour it provides. Each of her steps are precise, her back straight, her distance from the prince appropriate. Enough for her to pass Southern scrutiny.
Even if there is no life in the dance.
“I think you may be the first dance partner I’ve had to scowl,” the Prince says, amused.
It is not a reprimand, Lessa knows, but that doesn’t help. She schools her face into something approaching indifference instead.
“Apologise, your grace.”
“I was not seeking an apology. I am curious about your thoughts.”
He dances well. With the same effortless command with which he moves around the hall; like he was born to do so, and it has never occurred to him to do it badly.
“I fear I’d have to answer with an honesty that might offend.”
“Do not let that stop you.”
He’s humouring her, but she’s sure there’s genuine interest there. And she knows better. Knows the value of keeping her tongue. Especially in the dragon’s den. Especially to the dragon.
“I was thinking about how much I wish to be back home, where the world makes sense and one misstep does not endanger a king his kingdoms.”
“Ah,” the Prince says, as he turns with a guiding hand on the small of her back, in time with the dance. “The Seven Kingdoms are not quite that fragile.”
“But this was not a good idea regardless.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Time will show us either way.”
“You aren’t concerned about consequences?”
“I am the crown prince, everything I do has consequence.” There’s no self-importance in his words, only acknowledgement of the way things are. She knows no-one else who could manage such a statement without inviting ridicule. “Including,” he adds, “how much consequence I give to a single dance with the North’s daughter.”
“Would you be kind enough to repeat that to your father later,” she mutters, not entirely intending for him to hear.
He does anyway, and she sees a flash of teeth as a small laugh escapes. She turns her head and dips with the dance.
“I did not mean to upset his plans,” she clarifies. “Merely save myself from a prince’s foul mood. Instead, I’ve managed to anger a king.”
“You make my father out as quite the villain.”
She nearly freezes then, at the realisation she might be taken for insulting the King to the face of the crown prince. That she might have walked the line of treason with a loose tongue she normally so carefully guards. Prince Baelor doesn’t let her hesitate, the hand on her back guiding her before she can misstep.
“That was not my intention,” she says stiffly.
“I am not attempting to catch you out, my lady. I am merely observing that you have a fear of him you need not.”
On that, she begs to differ. “He is the king,” is all she says.
“He is.”
They dance in silence for a turn, and she becomes suddenly conscious of the placement of his hand on her waist. Entirely appropriate, entirely correct. Entirely too hot.
All of him burns too hot.
Beneath her palm, heat radiates through the layers of his tunic. Even the air between them feels charged by it. She forces herself to focus on what she can feel beneath her fingers, an old grounding trick her mother taught her for when her nerves threaten her duty. Only, she can feel the shift of the muscles in his arm as they guide her through a turn and that is an entirely different kind of distraction.
They are not the arms of a courtesan or idle princeling. They are the hard-earned muscle of a warrior used to relying on little more than his own body. As unassuming as he looks dressed up as a prince for the evening, she can feel the arms that wielded sword and shield in earnest not so long ago.
Bizarrely, it’s the kind of practical reassurance she finds comforting; more so than the soft southern words given like confetti down here. He might be dressed in finery and wield the sigil of House Targaryen on his breast, he might be clean shaven without a hint of a shadow, his image carefully fashioned into something inscrutable, but underneath all that she can feel something real.
Her head turns to look at him where the dance does not call for it, and she finds him already looking back at her. She doesn’t understand the shift in his expression, can’t fathom how she’s earned his sharp focus so keenly.
“What?” she asks, oh so elegantly.
“Do not let this court change you.”
She doesn’t even have chance to ask what that could possibly mean, because the music comes to a slow halt and the dance finishes.
He bows to her. “You did well.”
Strangely, she doesn’t think he means the dancing and shakes her head. “I am not good at this.”
“Many will think you are. It is not easy to manoeuvre your way into a dance with the crown prince, and yet you managed it deftly and within minutes of meeting.”
Lessa flushes then, embarrassed by the idea that her actions will be perceived as premeditated. That she will be viewed as a schemer, instead of someone who reacts. She thought before on Northern pessimism, without stopping to consider the bitter version of the South’s.
“Do not mistake me,” he says. “I am not voicing a complaint. I have rather enjoyed our dance, my lady. The honesty was refreshing, and my brother’s evening has been the poorer for your lack of company.”
With that grand declaration he does one final bow and is gone, leaving her alone in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by eyes that attempt to flay her intentions from her flesh.