Chapter 3: Ownership and Obedience
The air in Jace’s chambers tasted of cold ash and something sharper, something like rage. Alys Rivers knelt on the worn stone hearthrug, the intricate patterns of the Myrish carpet pressing into her knees. The room was a tomb of masculine severity, all dark wood and grim tapestries, the only light coming from a few guttering candles that threw uneasy shadows up the stone walls.
Her mouth was full of him, the hard, thick weight of his cock pushing against the back of her throat. She worked him with a practiced, hungry rhythm, one hand wrapped around the base, the other braced on his muscled thigh. She could feel the tension coiled in him, a spring wound too tight. She hollowed her cheeks, sucking hard, a low moan vibrating in her throat as she tasted the salt-slick of his skin.
It was a moan meant to please, to provoke. A performance.
His hand, which had been tangled loosely in her dark hair, suddenly clenched into a fist. He yanked her head back by the roots, a sharp, brutal pull that brought tears to her eyes and ripped his cock from her mouth with a wet, obscene sound.
“You think I’m blind?” His voice was a low, dangerous rasp, barely audible over the crackle of the fire. His violet eyes were chips of winter ice. “That little show today. That smirk was for her benefit, not mine.”
Alys gasped, her scalp burning. A string of saliva and pre-cum stretched from her swollen lips to the angry, purple head of his erection. She didn’t wipe it away. She let it gleam on her chin, a badge of her occupation. She licked her lips, defiant.
“I don’t know what you mean, my prince.” Her voice was husky from use. “I was merely attending my future lady. And you looked… tense. I offered comfort. As I always do.”
“Comfort.” The word was a curse. He didn’t release her hair. His other hand came up, his thumb rough as it smeared the wetness on her chin. “You marked your territory like a bitch in heat. In front of the king. In front of her.”
“She needed to see,” Alys hissed, her composure fraying. “She needed to understand her place. A pretty little rose in a vase. I am the one who knows what you are. I am the one who takes the darkness in you. She’d wilt at the sight of it.”
For a second, something flickered in his eyes—a weariness so profound it looked like pain. Then it was gone, buried under a fresh wave of cold anger. He used his grip on her hair to force her face back toward his lap. “Then earn your fucking keep.”
There was no tenderness, no play. It was a transaction of anger and leverage. She took him back into her mouth, her jaw aching immediately from the forced angle. He fucked her face with short, brutal thrusts, his hips pumping, his grip on her hair unrelenting. She choked, gagged, tears now streaming freely down her cheeks, mixing with the spit and sweat. The sounds were raw and ugly, the slap of skin, her strangled breaths, his low, ragged grunts.
He came with a snarled curse, his whole body rigid, pumping his release down her throat in hot, bitter pulses. He held her there until she swallowed convulsively, until he was spent.
When he finally shoved her away, she collapsed onto the rug, coughing, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked up at him, her beautiful face a mess of tears and defiance and spent passion. He was already adjusting his trousers, his expression closing up again, shuttered. The moment of visceral connection was over; it had just been another type of combat.
A solid knock echoed on the heavy oak door.
Jace didn’t even look at her. “Get up. Get presentable.”
Alys scrambled to her feet, smoothing her skirts, swiping at her face with shaky hands as Jace crossed the room and opened the door. Ser Arryk stood there, his flint-like eyes taking in the scene in one swift, comprehensive glance: the disheveled woman, the prince’s cold demeanor, the charged, sordid air. He showed no reaction.
“The Lady Roslin sent a page,” Arryk said, his voice neutral. “She wished to return this. Said you left it in the training yard.” He extended his hand. On his calloused palm lay the small obsidian dragon, looking even blacker and more fragile against his skin.
Jace stared at it. He remembered the feel of it in his glove, the surprise of her offering it, the absurd gentleness of the gesture in a place of violence. He had thrown it, a petty, furious action. And she had retrieved it. She had kept it, and now sought to give it back.
Alys, from behind him, made a soft, derisive sound in her throat.
Jace ignored her. He took the dragon. It was cool to the touch. “And where is the lady now?”
“She retired to her chambers after the… audience today,” Arryk said. “The page said she hoped to return it to you personally, but understood you were… indisposed.”
Indisposed. A polite, devastating word. Jace’s fingers closed around the carving, its edges biting into his palm. He gave a short, sharp nod. “Dismissed.”
Arryk left, closing the door with a soft finality. The silence that followed was heavier than before. Jace turned the dragon over in his hand, not looking at Alys.
“She’s playing a sweeter game than you,” he said quietly. “Yours is all poison and claws. Hers is… this.” He held up the black figurine. “It’s cleverer.”
Alys’s laugh was brittle. “It’s a trinket. She’s a child. She doesn’t know what to do with a man like you. She wants songs and whispered sweet nothings. I know what you need. I know what you are. A dragon doesn’t nest with a songbird.”
Jace finally looked at her. There was no gratitude in his gaze, no affection. Only a bleak assessment. “Get out.”
The dismissal was absolute. For a moment, pure hatred flashed in Alys’s blue eyes. Then she smoothed it away, curtsying with a mocking grace. “As my prince commands.”
She left, the door clicking shut behind her. Jace stood alone in the center of his cold room. He looked from the obsidian dragon in his hand to the cold, dark hearth. He thought of Roslin’s smile in the throne room, a sun attempting to pierce a thunderhead. He thought of her retrieving this from the mud.
He wasn’t a man for pretty things. They broke. They were used as weapons. They confused you.
He walked to the iron-bound chest at the foot of his bed, opened it, and threw the obsidian dragon inside. It landed with a dull clack amidst maps, spare daggers, and coils of rope. He slammed the lid shut, locking the sentiment away with the other tools of war.
In her sunlit chambers, Roslin listened as her young page returned, breathless. “He took it, my lady. Ser Arryk gave it to him.”
“And did the prince say anything?”
“No, my lady. He just… took it.”
Roslin nodded, dismissing the boy with a smile and a silver coin. She turned to the window. The thorn bush in the courtyard below was empty now.
So. He had accepted the returned dragon, but not come to see her. He had been “indisposed.” Alys had been with him. The message was as clear as a shouted insult.
She felt a hollow ache, but beneath it, a steelier resolve cooled and hardened. Sweetness was a weapon too. Patience was a strategy. She would not fight Alys in the mud. She would not beg for Jace’s attention.
She rang a small bell. When a maid appeared, Roslin’s voice was gentle, unwavering. “Please find Lady Alys. Inform her I will require her assistance after breakfast tomorrow. I wish to learn more about the governance of Dragonstone, its holdings, its histories. As my lady-in-waiting, her… intimate knowledge of the prince’s interests will be invaluable.”
The maid curtsied and fled. Roslin picked up a book of poetry, but her eyes didn’t scan the verses. She was seeing a different text—a map of a cold prince’s heart, and the two women vying to chart it. One claimed to know its dark territories. The other intended to learn them, quietly, completely, until she could navigate them in the dark.
She would start by making the mistress teach her everything.