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Ormund stared into those bottomless violet eyes — eyes he had known from the very first moment, eyes that had once shone with childish delight at the sight of him — and every word from Daeron's lips pierced his heart sharper than a Valyrian blade. His fingers settled on the youth's hips and tightened warningly, just a fraction more — not threateningly, but possessively, as though he still believed he could hold on to slipping power.
"I know you are not a child," he breathed out, and his voice wavered just enough — a skilfully measured dose of vulnerability. He leaned forward, closing the already negligible distance between their faces. The scent of lavender oil from his washed hair mingled with the smell of leather and wind that clung to Daeron, creating a strange, intoxicating combination.
"Everything I did," he continued, and in his tone emerged that all-too-familiar, enveloping cadence that Daeron had heard hundreds of times in his life, "everything I did was out of love for you. Not for the crown. Not for power. For you."
Daeron was silent. His fingers still rested on Ormund's cheeks, neither moving nor pulling away. He looked into his uncle's eyes — those grey, deep-set eyes that could be so warm when the lord was pleased, and so icy when he was angered — and in his chest, slowly, inexorably, the old familiar bitterness rose.
He knew that expression. Knew that voice. Knew that tactic.
How many times in his life had he heard those words? How many times had Ormund spoken to him of love, of devotion, of how everything was for his sake — and then done something that made Daeron wish he could sink through the stone flags of the floor? Lord Hightower was like a serpent — not the crude, hissing viper depicted on the banners of his enemies, but another, far more dangerous kind: quiet, enveloping, whose coils tightened slowly and almost tenderly, so that the victim did not notice the danger until it was too late.
Every time Ormund lied to him, the youth told himself it was for the best. He repeated it like a prayer, like an incantation, like the only justification that could drown out the quiet, insistent voice in the depths of his mind that insisted Lord Hightower could not be trusted.
He convinced himself not for his own peace — no. For Ormund's sake. That thought, once pure and noble, had over time become a perverted, agonising duty. Daeron knew his uncle was unstable — knew it with an intuitive, almost animal certainty. His uncle could be warm and affectionate over the morning meal, and by evening turn into an icy statue radiating menace with every word. He could discourse for hours on virtue and honour, and then, in a fit of rage, shatter a goblet against the wall an inch from a servant's head. This instability frightened Daeron far more than any dragon's fury — because a dragon, at least, was predictable in its nature, whereas Ormund never was.
And so Daeron chose submission. Not out of weakness — though the lord undoubtedly saw it as such. Out of mercy. Out of a desire to preserve the man he loved — yes, loved, despite everything, loved with that twisted, sick love that only a child can feel for their tormentor-parent. If Daeron had ever directly told his uncle he knew of his lies, if he had ever looked him in the eye and said, "I see through you, and you are not the righteous man you imagine yourself to be" — it would have destroyed Ormund. Shattered that fragile edifice of self-justification on which his entire being rested. So he swallowed the lies. Swallowed them in silence, obediently, with bowed head, and thanked his uncle for every crumb of attention, even if that attention left bruises on his skin and cracks in his soul. He drowned his inner turmoil in prayers, in sword drills, in long flights on Tessarion, where the wind blew every thought from his head except one — "I must return to him." And with each passing year, suppressing that voice became harder, because Ormund's lies grew more blatant, and his touches more possessive, more distant from the innocent paternal affection he used as a mask.
Now, seated on this man's hips, looking him straight in the eye and feeling the heat of his aroused flesh, Daeron felt the last shackles of that old, familiar lie falling from him. Not with a crash, not with a triumphant cry — but quietly, almost soundlessly, like ropes rotted by time that can no longer hold anything.
"Out of love?" he repeated quietly, almost gently, and there was something in that tone that made Ormund's stomach clench unpleasantly. "Out of that love, uncle, which was born of lust when I was eleven?"
The words fell into the silence of the chambers like a stone into still water. Ripples spread slowly, inexorably, and Ormund felt his face contort.
"You cannot slander me so," he said, and his voice dropped low, almost threatening. His brows drew together over the bridge of his nose, and his jaw clenched with that familiar, frightening force that presaged a storm. Righteous indignation of offended virtue. "After everything I have done for you... after everything I have sacrificed for you... you dare throw in my face these... these filthy..."
But Daeron did not look away. Did not lower his head. Did not tremble, as he had once trembled in childhood, expecting a slap or a cutting word.
Instead, he slowly, agonisingly slowly lowered his hand. His fingers, which had just been caressing Ormund's face, slid downward — over the heated neck where a pulse hammered wildly, over the collar of the linen shirt, over the chest where the heart pounded with panicked, erratic force. The youth's palm travelled over his stomach, feeling the muscles tense beneath the fabric, and moved further, to the waist of his trousers, until it reached the place where the treacherous proof of his uncle's desire could no longer be hidden.
Daeron's fingers touched his flesh through the cloth — lightly, almost weightlessly.
"Then why," the youth whispered, and his voice held not triumph but infinite, all-understanding sorrow, "do I feel your flesh now, uncle?"
A sound escaped Ormund's chest — convulsive, ragged, half-gasp half-groan. His hips twitched involuntarily, pressing toward that impossible, forbidden touch, and his fingers on the youth's thighs clenched with such force that bruises would surely bloom on the pale skin. He stared into his nephew's eyes, which had once shone with childish adoration and now reflected his own face, distorted with shame and desire — and could not utter a word.
Daeron's fingers did not flinch. They still lay atop the fabric, feeling through the thin linen the heat and weight of another's desire — the very same that Lord Hightower had buried for years under layers of piety, righteous anger, and stern mentorship. The youth did not squeeze, did not caress — he simply held his palm there, as if claiming the right to this part of his uncle's body, to this shameful truth hidden from the world. And in his gaze there was neither triumph nor disgust. Only infinite, all-understanding sorrow — the sorrow of one who had long known the truth and had finally forced another to look it in the face.
"They could have killed me today," Daeron said, and the words fell into the silence of the chambers like drops of molten lead into icy water. "Those men, those sellswords — they came for me as much as for you. Perhaps even more."
He did not speak with malice. He was not trying to wound.He was merely stating a fact — with that same calm, ruthless directness he had shown a few days prior when he beat a man at cyvasse
"And you would have done nothing," he continued, and his fingers finally stirred — lightly, almost lazily tracing the outline of what the fabric concealed. "You would have stood there, by the wall, doubled over with your own revulsion, while they cut me to pieces."
Daeron did not finish. Because Ormund jerked beneath him — not pulling away, no, but surging forward with that swift, serpentine grace that always preceded an outburst of his rage. His fingers yanked his nephew toward him, forcing him chest to chest, so that the distance between them shrank to nothing. The air between them grew hot and stifling, thick with lavender oil and youthful sweat. His lips nearly touched the youth's face when he spoke — not shouted, but whispered, and that hissing, fury-laden whisper was more terrifying than any threat.
"I will gut that bitch," he breathed directly into the youth's parted lips, and every word was steeped in such concentrated, such searing hatred that the very air around them seemed to tremble. "From cunt to ear for daring to do this. I will carve out her heart and present it to you, my boy."
He broke off, breathing heavily. His chest rose and fell, pressing against Daeron's, and the youth felt each convulsive breath of Lord Hightower as clearly as his own. In Ormund's grey eyes, usually cold and calculating, something almost mad now churned — that same darkness Daeron had learned to recognise in childhood, which always heralded the worst.
"You ask if I would have done anything?" Ormund whispered, and his palm, releasing the youth's thigh, slid up his back, fingers threading into the copper hair at his nape. "You dare doubt me?"
His grip in the hair tightened, forcing Daeron to tilt his head back, exposing his throat — vulnerable, pale, with a thin thread of pulse beating beneath the skin. Ormund brought his lips to his nephew's ear, and his breath seared the tender skin.
"Have I ever failed you?" he asked, and in that question was everything: threat and plea and demand, and a desperate, almost childlike need for affirmation of his own significance. "Answer me. Have I not been there every time you needed me? Did I not raise you from your knees when you were nothing — a younger prince forgotten by his own mother, abandoned by his own father? Who made a man of you? Who placed a sword in your hand? Who..."
His free hand, meanwhile, slid downward, and his fingers — those same groomed, heavy-ringed fingers that Daeron had kissed hundreds of times in submission — grasped the fabric of his trousers at the hips. Slowly, as if giving time for objection, for a halt, for a shove, Ormund pulled the cloth down. The linen slid over his skin, baring pale, still youthfully narrow hips, and the cool air of the chambers touched his heated flesh.
"No," Daeron breathed out, and his voice broke, catching on a half-sob full of that same agonising, unbearable capitulation he felt every time his uncle gained the upper hand. "Never, my lord."
He did not say it as a lie. Not as another concession meant to placate the storm. He said it as the truth — that same maimed, turned-inside-out truth in which he had lived his entire life. Ormund truly had never failed him — in the sense in which Daeron himself had learned to understand that word. His lord had always been there. Always controlled. Always possessed. His presence was suffocating, all-consuming, erasing the boundaries between care and violence, love and possession, protection and enslavement.