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Chapter Text

Melantho stood as still as stone while her ladies arranged her gown and dressed her hair. She had arrived at Summerhall from Tyrosh four days previously, since her father and Prince Maekar had decided on suitable terms for her to cross the Narrow Sea and wed his eldest son. She had barely recovered from the journey, barely settled into the set of rooms that faced the east, before she had to ready herself for her wedding.

She did not know what to expect; what bride does? Her hair had been rewashed with blue dye, her preference, and it fell brightly in curls down to her waist. She wore a gown in the Tyroshi style, a stiff cobalt damask bodice clasped over layers of fine white silk, and there were pearls wound in her hair, around her neck, hanging from her ears. The summer-sky blues and full-moon whites set her warm brown skin off to best advantage, so she did not fear being underdressed or unimpressive, but there was so much of the day she could not hope to prepare for.

She had not even caught a glimpse of Daeron, her husband-to-be. They were meant to meet at supper after she arrived, but Prince Maekar informed her with a tight jaw that he was indisposed, and the matter did not come up again. Melantho had pondered indisposed and decided he was with a mistress, ill from drink, or run off, and was unsure which of those was a worse omen.

“You look lovely,” said her lady-in-waiting Khione in Valyrian. Melantho had been raised to speak the Common Tongue as well, ever since the Blackfyre’s marriage to Lady Rohanne made it seem possible that the dragonlords would look for brides in the Free Cities, but she was still more comfortable in Tyroshi, and her ladies didn’t know much else. “Do you think that boy will show up?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Melantho. “If nothing else, I couldn’t bear the shame.”

He did, in the end. He was nearly dragged to the altar with his sandy hair lank and rumpled around his face, as if he’d just risen from bed, and Melantho could hardly focus on the short ceremony itself. Daeron brushed her mouth with his own once, quickly, at the end, and she tried not to wrinkle her nose at his smell of sweat and vinegar, tavern smells. A drunk, then, she decided.

At the feast afterwards, he ate little but drank heavily, hardly looking over at his new bride, and Melantho picked at her plate, her stomach heavy as if she’d swallowed lead. “I’ll have no bedding ceremony,” Daeron murmured to his father as the celebration continued. “No need to impugn on my wife’s modesty.”

A ridiculous excuse. She was dressed less modestly than any woman in attendance, though she did not mind skipping the bedding. Her father had told her what it involved– the men of her new family stripping her, groping her, preparing her for her husband– and it felt too barbaric to endure. Doubtless he’d drunk too much to perform. It was almost a relief.

The feast ended with no great fanfare– no one, particularly the bride and groom, seemed inclined to prolong the party– and so it was hours before midnight when Melantho returned, alone, to her rooms, and Khione helped her out of her jewels and layers. “Not a happy occasion, then?” she asked, and Melantho sighed, her shoulders slumped.

“If every occasion is as happy as this one,” she said, “I may drown myself before the year is out.”

*

Three weeks later, Melantho folded her hands across her lap and gazed coolly up at Prince Maekar. She had been summoned to his solar, interrupting the walk she had been taking with her ladies in the garden, and she was affronted. She vowed she would not speak first.

Eventually he set his hands on the back of his chair and rested his weight on them. “Have you consummated your marriage to my son?” he asked bluntly. He wasn’t trying to be harsh, she thought, but in her short time at Summerhall she’d seen already how the prince tended to snap at the most minor frustration.

His son did seem to be a source of significant frustration, which did not surprise her; her own eldest brother was very involved in their father’s business, always at his side, striking deals and negotiating contracts by himself ever since he was just shy of manhood, while Daeron was so often absent he hardly seemed to live in the same castle. If he heard petitions or managed accounts, Melantho never heard a word of it.

“You must ask your son, my lord,” she said evenly, refusing as much as possible to show her own feelings on the matter. She did have her pride.

“I did.”

“Do you not trust him, then?”

The prince gritted his teeth, and his knuckles went white gripping his chair. “His answer was that he does not know. He recalls sometimes having gone to your bedchamber, he recalls sometimes waking up in your bed, but it seems a mystery what happens in between.”

Melantho shrugged one shoulder. “A lady must have privacy.”

“Not when that lady is my son’s wife.”

“If your son were more of a husband, he perhaps would have more of a wife,” she snapped, despite herself. She was the Archon’s niece, she chafed at being sent away to this unwelcoming place where everyone seemed to be sulking or drinking. Her daily walks in the garden were her only respite, and being interrupted to have the details of her maidenhead discussed so frankly with her father-by-law made her flush with irritation.

Three weeks she had been married, and it had still not been consummated. Daeron did stumble to her bed a few times, but he neither undressed nor tried to touch her, and she refused to sleep beside him when he was as drunk as he was, so on those nights she shared a pallet with one of her ladies. It was humiliating, to be saddled with a husband who could not look her in the eye, did not speak to her, and would not even bring himself to heave atop her for a few minutes so that she might at least have a child to focus on.

Prince Maekar seemingly didn’t have an answer for her outburst, only sighed deeply and nodded at the door to indicate she could leave. She rose fluidly and set her shoulders back, a curl of hair brushing her collarbone like a lover’s fingertip– not that she would know. She inclined her head slightly and left, her silks sweeping the stone floor, and she went to resume her walk outside.

To her surprise, she saw Daeron leaving the stables, not quite stumbling but obviously returning from the tavern. It was only mid-afternoon, so if he was already this drunk she suspected she would have another night of him tossing in her bed to look forward to, and it aggravated her enough that she strode across the yard towards him. “My lady,” he said as she approached, sounding surprised.

“Why do you humiliate me to your father?” she demanded. “I just left an interrogation from him.” Her accent was stronger when she was angry, she could hear it.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I apologize if I misrepresented…”

“I want you to say,” she poked him in the chest like a mother scolding a boy, “that it is not your father’s business what goes on in my bed. I want you to say,” another poke, he looked bewildered at the touch, “that you will come to my bed when you’re not dead on your feet from wine, and you will do your duty by me. You mounted that horse, are you saying you cannot mount a woman? Or would you rather ride the horse?”

Daeron shook his head, then pressed a palm over one of his eyes, as if being in the sunlight made them ache. “My lady, I– I apologize. I fear I hadn’t the presence of mind to lie to my father. Tomorrow– tomorrow night, I promise you.”

Melantho swallowed hard and dipped her head in acknowledgement. There was nothing to be gained by further berating a man who was meant to know her intimately, who was able to mediate between her and his father. “I am sorry for my words,” she said, and they sounded false to her own ears but Daeron didn’t seem to notice. “I will see you on the morrow.”

Without another word she turned and started back towards the gardens.

She had quite calmed down by the next evening. She had not seen Daeron all day, outdoors or at any meals, and Prince Maekar had shot her a queer look at supper but did not say anything to her. After supper, Khione helped her prepare, bathed and perfumed her, dressed her in a silk nightdress so thin that the entire shape of her body was visible if she passed in front of a candle. Over that she wore a dressing gown of deep violet, embroidered with golden thread. “Plait my hair,” requested Melantho in Tyroshi.

Khione clicked her tongue. “I hate to arrange it if he’s going to stick his clumsy hands in it. It’ll need the comb later, I expect. It’s more becoming when it’s loose, anyway."

“As if that matters,” said Melantho, and Khione laughed.

“The little girl, Kiva, do you know what she said when she saw your husband? She asked if all that famous Valyrian beauty died with the family when their dragons did.”

Melantho laughed. Prince Maekar looked carved from stone, and of his daughters, one had her mother’s Rhoynish beauty and the other was young enough she could grow into anything. There was supposed to be a handsome brother, but he was off in exile in Essos. Pity they hadn’t crossed paths before her ship left Tyrosh, she thought distantly. “Besides,” continued Khione, “perhaps he can’t do it. One of the laundry girls says the king takes a book to bed instead of his wife, perhaps your husband has lost his dragonfire the same way.”

There was a knock at the door and Melantho gestured for Khione to disappear into the maids’ adjoining quarters. When she was gone, Melantho settled back at her little table and called out, “come in.”

It was, of course, Daeron who entered, but he looked different than she’d ever seen him. His surcoat was neat and unfastened over a clean linen shirt, and his hair had been combed and tied back. “Good evening, my lady,” he said, his voice smooth.

“Good evening, my lord,” she replied distantly, distractedly. Was this the same man? She wouldn’t at all have been ashamed to stand beside this man at the altar and pledge herself to him.

He glanced down at himself with a smile that twisted one corner of his mouth. “Closer to sober than you’ve seen me, I expect.”

“Closer to?”

He half-shrugged, but the smile slipped away. “A cup or two to steady my hands, no more.” He held one hand up to show that it didn’t shake. Melantho didn’t speak; she wasn’t sure what to say. How could this be the same man she had accosted in the yard only the afternoon previous? After a bit too much silence, he cleared his throat. “Do you… mind if I sit with you?”

“Oh,” she said. Somehow she hadn’t expected that, but then she wasn’t quite sure what at all she did expect. “Yes. Sit, yes.” She gestured to the seat across from her, and he took it gratefully, leaning back with his legs crossed. With his hair pulled back from his face, she could get a long look, the first she’d gotten since they were married. He had gentle features, a cleft chin and smooth jaw, his father’s sharp jut of nose a contrast to his large, sad eyes. He had the sort of face that mothers always favored, a face that would always seem to need a pat on the cheek or a kiss on the forehead. There were still dark shadows under his eyes, but he was no longer bloodshot or flushed in blotches. Evidently she stared for too long, because that half-smile flicked back onto his face.

“I hope I am not so disappointing after all,” he said, but there was a sadness to his voice instead of humor. “You should know, my lady– this marriage was not my doing. I had preferred not to marry at all, it was my father who wanted…”

Her heart caught in her throat. He did not want her, he had not asked for her. He had avoided her bed because he did not wish to be a husband. If any hope had bloomed in her chest seeing him neatened up and presentable, it slipped away like smoke. “I did not ask for it either,” she said evenly. “I follow my father’s command.”

He nodded. “Well, then. Shall we get it over with?”

A muscle in her jaw fluttered. Never had she imagined her first night in bed with her husband to involve getting it over with, but if that was what Daeron wished, she could not argue. Perhaps he was disappointed he didn’t have a sister old enough to wed instead, that’s what the Targaryens did. She nodded, rose from her seat, and untied her dressing gown. Daeron watched as she laid the dressing gown over the back of her chair, her nightdress clinging to the curves of her breasts and hips, and he shed his surcoat the same way. She climbed into bed while he removed his boots and unlaced his breeches, and he never removed his linen shirt, which was long enough to cover his private parts when all the rest was gone.

When he was in bed beside her, he cupped her jaw with one long, slender hand, and she thought he might kiss her– his lips had brushed hers only as briefly as necessary at the wedding– but he only looked at her. Up close, his eyes were the blue of an autumn sky, cool and light, and his lashes were long enough to be the envy of any girl, near to brushing his cheeks when he blinked. There was a faint scar across one cheekbone. His other hand drew the hem of her nightdress up to the top of her thighs, and he knelt between them, and she could not see what he was doing, only felt the pressure of his manhood entering her, the stretch, the strain, the discomfort, and she wanted to grit her teeth at the pain of it.

At some point he stopped moving and she supposed he was fully sheathed, and his eyes closed. Did women truly endure this over and over for the sake of children? What pleasure could men possibly take in it? She shifted her hips in an attempt to find a more comfortable position and his breath caught. He began rocking his hips, slow at first, then quicker, one hand braced on the bed, the other loosely resting on her thigh, and she felt rather secondary to the whole affair, an object more than a participant, but then Daeron began thrusting quicker and quicker and then he huffed out a breath and his hips stalled against hers. He had finished, she supposed. If she was fortunate, his seed would catch, and she would be with child, and she need not endure this again.

After a moment he slid out of her and her thighs clamped together involuntarily. He climbed out of her bed and reached for his breeches. “Next week, again, perhaps,” he said, and Melantho could not say anything at all. Only when he had dressed and left did she sit up slowly and truly contemplate her situation. This was the rest of her life, her drunk of a husband sobering up only long enough to spill his seed in her. Gods above.