Chapter 7: Silent Conquest
The gilded cage was mercifully silent.
Alysanne sat on the edge of the monstrous bed, still wearing the shift she’d donned after her maids had scrubbed the lemon custard from her skin and hair. The scent of it lingered, faint and acidic beneath the heavier perfume of rosewater they’d tried to drown it in. She heard the distant, fading roar of the feast from two floors below—a dull thunder that echoed the storm in her own blood.
She had walked away from him with terrifying composure. Now, with nothing to do but wait, the cold began to seep in. The Baratheon lion carved into the dark wood of the headboard seemed to snarl at her.
The door opened.
He didn’t slam it. He closed it with a solid, definitive thud that was worse than any violence. Garon stood there for a moment, his frame filling the space, backlit by the torchlight from the corridor. He had shed his formal doublet. He wore only a loose linen shirt, unlaced at the throat, and dark breeches. He smelled of wine, sweat, and the sharp, clean odor of night air, as if he had walked the battlements before coming here.
He looked at her. She looked at the tapestry on the far wall, a scene of Gardener kings she didn’t see.
“Still wearing the shift?” His voice was gravel, worn smooth by drink and quiet fury.
“It seemed simpler,” she said, her tone mirroring the practiced detachment she’d used on his soldier.
He made a sound in his throat, not quite a laugh. He walked to the sideboard, poured himself a cup of wine from a pitcher, and drank it in one long swallow. He set the cup down too carefully.
“They’re talking about you downstairs,” he said, not turning. “The lady who stopped a riot with a dirty sleeve. The King is amused. Your father is preening. My men are confused. They don’t know whether to be insulted or impressed.”
“And you?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.
He turned then, his storm-blue eyes pinning her. “I don’t like being managed, Alysanne. Not by the King. Not by you.”
“I didn’t manage you. I stopped you from starting a war over a cake.”
“It wasn’t about the fucking cake!” The words exploded, low and harsh. He took a step toward the bed, his control straining. “It was about the principle. The insult. The constant, needling, pretty insult from your green-handed lords who think a song is as good as a sword. You made my man look a fool. You made me look… restrained.”
“You were restrained. That’s what a lord does. Or do Stags just charge at every provocation?”
He was in front of her now, looming. The heat of him, the anger, was a physical force. “You touched my wrist,” he said, his voice dropping. “In front of them all.”
She finally met his gaze. “And it worked.”
Something dangerous flickered in his eyes. Acknowledgment. Resentment. Something hotter and darker beneath. The memory of that contact seemed to hang between them, more intimate than anything this night was supposed to bring.
He looked away first, his jaw working. “Get on the bed.”
Her heart, which had been a frozen lump in her chest, gave a single, hard thump.
“Face down.”
The command was flat, devoid of any tenderness. It was a tactical order. She understood. This way, they wouldn’t have to look at each other. They could perform this duty without the burden of faces, of recognition. They could be two bodies fulfilling a contract.
A strange calm descended over her. She moved, turning away from him, and lowered herself onto the thick coverlets. The silk of her shift whispered against her skin. She pressed her cheek against the cool linen of a pillow, her face turned toward the carved lion. She closed her eyes. She could hear him moving behind her—the soft rustle of clothing, the quiet snick of a belt being undone.
The bed dipped heavily as he knelt behind her. She heard his breath, slow and controlled. He didn’t touch her otherwise. No exploratory hand, no feigned caress. This was to be a direct assault.
She felt the hem of her shift being pushed up, gathering at the small of her back. The night air kissed the backs of her thighs, her buttocks. She was exposed. Utterly.
His hand, calloused and broad, came down on her hip, not to stroke, but to hold her in place. His grip was firm, unyielding. She felt the blunt, hot pressure of him against her, probing where she was dry and tight with tension.
“Relax,” he muttered, a note of frustration in his voice.
“I am relaxed.” Her own voice was muffled by the pillow.
He swore under his breath, a low, crude curse. He spat once, into his own palm, and she heard the wet sound before he brought his hand between her legs. The touch was clinical, rough, smearing moisture that wasn’t her own at her entrance. It was shocking in its practicality.
He positioned himself again. One hand remained a vise on her hip, the other guided himself. He pushed.
The burn was immediate, a sharp, stretching pain. She sucked in a breath, her fingers clenching in the coverlets. She felt him hesitate, a fraction of an inch withdrawn.
“Just do it,” she whispered into the pillow, the command hers this time.
He drove forward.
It was a single, deep, conquering thrust. She cried out, the sound swallowed by the goose down. He was buried inside her to the hilt, a hard, relentless fullness that tore a gasp from her lungs. He was thick, and the rapid, ungentle entry left her feeling split open.
He didn’t move for a long moment, both of them frozen in that first shocking union. She could feel the violent thrum of his heartbeat through his cock inside her. She could feel the coiled tension in his thighs pressed against hers.
Then he began.
It was a steady, punishing rhythm. No art to it. No attempt at pleasure. It was the mechanical act of consummation.In, out. A deep, withdrawing slide followed by a solid, impactful drive back into her core. The slap of his skin against hers was a loud, rhythmic counterpoint to his ragged breaths. The bedframe, a solid thing of oak and iron, began to groan with each thrust, a low, aching protest.
Alysanne buried her face deeper. Tears sprang to her eyes, not from the pain, which was already mutating, softening at the edges into a raw, overwhelming sensation. It was from the sheer, shocking physicality of it. He was inside her. This man she was bred to hate. This man whose anger was a tangible force. And her body, traitorously, was responding.
Each thrust dragged a friction through her that began to spark something igneous deep in her belly. A heat that had no business being there. She tried to stifle it, to lock it away. But with every deep, filling stroke, a low sound was torn from her throat—a choked moan she barely recognized. She bit the pillow to silence it, but it escaped as a whimper.
He heard it.
His rhythm faltered. The next thrust was harder, deeper, as if in punishment. Or in answer.
“Fuck,” he growled, the word ripped from him. His grip on her hip tightened, surely leaving bruises. His other hand came down, braced on the mattress beside her head, caging her in. The pace increased. It was no longer just duty. There was a fury in it now, a frantic, driving need.
The sounds grew filthier, wetter. The slick noise of their joining filled the space between the grunts of the bed and his harsh breaths. He was pounding into her now, each plunge jolting her body up the mattress. The pain was gone, burned away by a coiling, urgent tension building at her core. It horrified her. She fought it, clenching her thighs, trying to will the feeling away. It only made the friction more intense, made him curse again.
“Gods,” he hissed, his control shattering. “You’re so… tight.”
It wasn’t a compliment. It was an accusation.
She couldn’t hold back the moan this time. It was loud, desperate, as he angled a thrust that rubbed directly over a place inside her that burst with sudden, shocking pleasure. She arched against her will, pushing back onto him, taking him even deeper.
He gasped, surprised. For a second, they moved together, a brief, terrible harmony.
Then he was gone, his weight leaving her, his heat withdrawing. She felt a sudden, devastating emptiness, a cold rush of air where he had been. Before she could process it, his hands were on her again, turning her onto her back. His face was above hers, flushed, his dark hair damp with sweat, his blue eyes wild and unrecognizable. He looked ravaged.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice raw.
She stared up, her own breath coming in short, shocked pants. Her shift was rucked up around her waist, her body exposed to his gaze. He was still hard, glistening with her.
He didn’t ask permission. He shoved her thighs apart with his knees and drove back into her in one savage stroke.
This was different. Face to face. She could see every flicker on his face—the anger, the shock, the desperate, clawing pleasure. He braced himself over her, one arm beside her head, the other hand tangling roughly in her hair, not to hurt, but to hold her there, to keep her eyes on his.
“You stopped the fight,” he panted, thrusting deep. “With your… fucking… composure.”
Each word was punctuated by a driving plunge. She could only gasp, her hips lifting to meet him, her body betraying her utterly. The coil inside her was winding tighter, impossibly tight, fed by the raw desperation in his movements and the sheer visual horror of his need.
“You think you’re so clever,” he grunted, his hips hammering against hers. The bed slammed into the stone wall with a crack. “You think you can handle me.”
“I did,” she moaned, the defiance the last thing she had left.
He snarled, a purely animal sound, and his mouth crashed down onto hers.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claiming. Hot, bruising, all teeth and tongue and the shared taste of wine and fury. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her nails digging into the hard muscles of his back, scoring his skin through the linen of his shirt. He groaned into her mouth, and the sound vibrated through her entire body.
The tension snapped.
Her climax tore through her without warning, a convulsive, white-hot eruption that shattered her composure into a thousand pieces. She screamed into his mouth, her body locking around him, pulsing violently. It felt like falling, like breaking.
He cried out, a ragged, broken shout against her lips. His own release followed instantly, triggered by her violent clenching around him. He drove into her one last, shuddering time and held there, buried to the root, as he spilled hot and deep inside her. She felt every pulse, a shocking intimacy that left her breathless.
He collapsed onto her, his full weight pressing her into the mattress, his face buried in the crook of her neck. His breath scorched her skin. They were both slick with sweat, trembling. The only sound was their ragged, overlapping gasps for air and the slow, dying creak of the bed.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The smell of their sex, pungent and undeniable. The chill of the room on her damp skin. The weight of him.
He rolled off her with a heavy, graceless motion, lying on his back beside her, an arm thrown over his eyes. His chest rose and fell like a bellows.
Alysanne lay still, staring at the canopy above. Her body felt used, wrecked, utterly known. A profound and terrifying shame washed over her, not for the act, but for her own uncontrollable response. For the pleasure she had taken from the enemy.
After a long while, he spoke, his voice hollowed out, addressed to the ceiling.
“The maester will confirm it was done. You’ll have your proof for the ravens in the morning.”
He was speaking of the consummation. The political reality. The blood on the sheets that would be displayed.
She didn’t answer. She pulled the ruined shift down over her legs and turned onto her side, facing away from him, towards the snarling lion on the headboard. She felt the slow trickle of his seed between her thighs.
Some time later, she heard the sound of him pouring more wine. He didn’t return to the bed. He sat in a chair by the cold hearth, a silent, dark silhouette against the grey embers, and drank until dawn.