Mother Of Monsters [GoT]

𝔰𝔦𝔵.

It was strange for both of them, to live as a married couple in her family's grand castle. They had privacy so far away from the Queen and King's chamber but it was rare that they wanted it. Both Vaela and Svedyr agreed that they wanted to be near those they were comfortable with, hers and his family.

Ynira seemed the only one willing enough to trek through the Red Scale castle to make time with her sister and brother-by-law. Ingilda and Baeric tended to their people as if little had changed, something Vaela had yet to decide if she liked.

The only time they had consummated their marriage had burned and ached like nothing she had ever felt. He was no larger than the last few men she'd bedded, and it hadn't hurt in truth until he'd come. The feeling had been so painful she could scarcely rise the next day. He had blistered and burned her as never she had felt before but at least, it seemed, he understood his doings. He was careful and tender with her. And most importantly, she thought, he did not mount her again.

If he loves me, she told herself as she watched his broad form, I am safe. He will not eat me or rape me. I will be a helpful object around the house but I will be safe.

She smiled and imagined it. "Do you think there are more dragonriders? More than the Redfyres and the Targaryens?" Ignoring her imagined scenes for a time, she went to her husband and set her head on his broad shoulders, struggling a bit to reach.

"I suppose there could be. Just as the South does not know about us, there could be Valyrians still living with dragons in the Freehold, or hidden away in Essos." She breathed him in, unafraid of what it might seem like. We are man and wife, beast and monster. I am allowed to know his scent. 

She glanced around their bedchambers, yet to be truly decorated for fear that they'd move out so soon. The only part of the dull room she enjoyed were her four remaining dragon eggs, nestled in individual crates of steel glowing red by the hearth. The rest of the room was without much color, decorated only by their things strewn about and the copper bands Svedyr had removed from the various places about his face. "Will you tell me about your family while I shave your head?"

He turned to her then, his grey gaze soft as smoke. "Is it so bad it needs shaving?" He gave his bald head a feel and then looked to their mirror with a frown. His hair had grown only a fingernail's height, giving him an orange glow like a magic being. "Is this not a wife's duty? To maintain my hair in such a way?"

His tone was joking but it did not aid her nervousness as she looked away. "I didn't think it was." She cast her eyes down, the dragon leaving her body quick as it'd come. I am no dragon, she told herself, cursed herself, I am a timid fawn ready to be hunted. No, that can't be it. "You should have told me what you wanted before now. We've hardly been wed a moon."

Laughing softly, her husband beckoned her back into their bedchambers and closed the balcony doors behind them. "I was only joking, Val." He grabbed a sharp shaving blade from his side of their shared bed and nothing else. "But you will help me, aye? Close shave."

"I've never shaved a man's head. Never shaved anything before." He gave her a knowing nod and smiled again. "Is it like skinning something?"

"Only if it all goes wrong." He took the blade from her and brought it to his scalp. In a clean motion, a stripe from his orange hair had gone. "Lay it like this and don't let it slip as you pass it over."

She nodded, nervously, and took the razor back. It felt strange to curl her scarred hand over the blade. The slice from their wedding ceremony had healed well, but the ugly scar was much stiffer than the skin before. Vaela squeezed her hand around the handle to get used to the feeling. Before she could bring it to his head and begin, he sat down on a chair and slapped his leg. Eyeing him, she shook her head. "We're man and wife, is it so wrong that you get a good angle?"