Chapter Text
The tourney field was a rolling expanse of green field, shadowed by tents erected over the spectator seats. The archery competition had begun, but only just. Arya had not taken her turn yet.
They were seated next to the Northern retinue, Jaime next to Brienne, and Brienne in the place of honour right next to Queen Sansa. Her dress was the lightest grey silk, suitable for the warm weather, but the bodice was a cage of weirwood branches twining over her breasts, the branches carved ivory and the leaves hammered out of copper. On her head was her direwolf circlet. Her hair was worn in a long braid curled and fastened at the nape of her neck with a plain silver pin. Sitting on a bench rather than a throne of dragon maw, Sansa Stark still looked every inch the queen.
On Queen Sansa’s left was a stretch of empty seats, reserved for her sister and Theon Greyjoy, then rows of southern lord and ladies. On a dais in the middle of the stands was Queen Daenerys. She sat in a throne fashioned out of the skull of the Night King’s wight dragon. Her gown exposed her throat and her arms, thin and light, but dyed black and red, the colours of her house. She wore no crown, her silver-white hair and Dothraki braids testament enough of her station.
The two queens barely acknowledged each other’s presence, as if the ghost of Jon Snow still hung between them. The North hadn’t forgiven the dragon queen for that, though his sacrifice had ended the Long Night. The north’s attendance in this fete was mere formality, a gesture to appease. Tyrion had told Jaime that Queen Sansa had extended an invitation for her own nameday feast, four months hence, which Queen Daenerys had accepted with icy grace. Neither of them had the appetite for another war so soon after the last one ended.
Arya Stark’s turn arrived, and she took her place fifty paces from the target. To no one’s surprise, her arrows flew true, as though the strong coastal wind had no bearing on her aim, and no one else even came close. Others took their turns, after, and they took an age. Jaime had begun to grow bored. Would that he had taken his embroidery hoop with him. He had finished in time for the tourney, but he could always start a new piece, at least to keep himself from the dullness. A few times, he leaned in to make an odd comment here and there, but Brienne shushed him, not wanting to be impolite.
He couldn’t even twiddle his thumbs, as he only had one thumb.
After what felt like all his hairs turning white, it was over. Grey Worm, the Unsullied General, called out the winner, garnering polite applause from the spectators. Not a single one of them were surprised, but by being leaps and bounds better than her competition, she had made it a terribly dull contest.
Missandei presented Arya with a wreath of lavenders, which Arya took. She looked down on it, frowning a little, as though she had not considered who she would crown as her Queen of Love and Beauty. She looked up, then, and tossed the wreath in the air. It flew in a perfect arc and landed on Queen Daenerys’ lap.
The crowd gasped, a few cheered, but Jaime barked out a laugh. The girl is never boring, this much he could say about her.
Arya grinned. “It matches your eyes, Your Grace,” she said. The crowd froze, unsure if this was to be taken as praise or insult to their queen, but then Daenerys smiled and placed the crown on her head, and the crowd cheered again, loud and joyous. Jaime craned his neck to see his brother, and as expected, Tyrion looked relieved at the averted disaster.
Arya returned to the stands and took a seat on Queen Sansa’s left. “No incidents, as you requested,” Arya muttered under her breath.
“Well done,” Sansa said, betraying her pride. “The comment on her eyes is a nice touch.”
“It’s true,” Arya said, indignant.
“I never said it wasn’t,” Sansa said, and she turned her head to see Queen Daenerys and her lavender crown. “It does suit her rather well, does it not?”
Lunch was served after the first half of the lists. The spread covered everything from roasted capons to fish cakes, apricot pies and chilled wine. Brienne’s sickness had waned by lunchtime, leaving a magnificent appetite behind. She tasted a little bit of everything, though abstaining on the wine and mead as usual. A small area near the feast table was filled with merchants and cooks selling their own fares, specialties, and delicacies from their regions. A Dornish merchant sold underripe mangoes, sour and tangy, and to her surprise, she liked it. Jaime watched her with amusement whenever she returned to their table bringing stranger and stranger foods, and he dutifully tasted each, somehow almost matching her appetite.
They closed the courses with a serving of boiled apples, sliced and arranged to look like a dragon, spun sugar as its fire. Brienne took a bite, enjoying the bittersweet burnt sugar. “I wonder,” Brienne said, carefully lest anyone listening might take umbrage, “if the palace servants and retinues are eating as well as we are.”
Tyrion washed down his food with wine, then said, “The queen made sure of it. She even wanted them to feast with the lords and ladies, but Lord Commander Mormont insisted against it, lest we compromise the security and offend the nobility. So instead, the areas are separated, but the dishes served are the same.”
“That’s very liberal of her,” Jaime said. “Speaking of servants, Brienne, I think our Ara is wasted in the scullery.”
Brienne took a gulp of water and pushed her empty dish away, finally done. “She sails too well to be bound to one place,” she said. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve been talking with our dear brother,” Jaime said, grinning as Tyrion lifted his goblet to salute them, “when I did my needlework at his office, and he agreed to employ Ara as part of Her Grace’s ship crew. The girl often talks of adventuring, and the queen travels often enough to Essos. Besides, I need to reward her for lying to you so many times about my supposed inadequacy with the needle.”
“Jaime,” Brienne chided, laughter bubbling in her throat, but she sobered soon enough. “Is this what she wants?” In her heart of hearts, Brienne knew it to be sure. After all, had she not had a similar calling herself? And yet, she did not want to presume.
“I haven’t asked. I want to ask you, first, if you would release her from her service, should she want this.”
Brienne smiled, thinking of Ara’s joy over loaned breeches and allowance to procure her own pair. “She’s no prisoner of mine. If she consents, and I think she will, then I give her my blessing.”
“Excellent,” Tyrion said, clapping his hands. “If she’s as good as you’ve been telling me, mayhaps I would not have to spend half my travels retching into a bucket.”
By the time they returned to the stands to watch the second half of the lists, their full bellies and the cool spring wind lulled them to a light doze. Neither of them had eaten this much in a long while. Jaime leaned on Brienne’s solid armour, somehow comfortable despite the cold metal surface, and she had taken off her gloves so they could entwine their fingers. Sometime between the tilts, she felt herself drifting, and not even the crowd’s cheers roused her.
A hand fell on Brienne’s shoulder, shaking her awake.
“Brienne,” Arya said, looking reproachful. “You’ve less than an hour to get ready for the melee.”
Brienne hummed and disentangled her fingers from Jaime’s. He woke up as soon as her touch left him. “Is it time?” he asked.
Brienne tried to resist a yawn, then failing. “I suppose so.” She stood up. “I should get ready and loosen my limbs.”
He tugged on her arm, pulling her down to kiss her in a manner most improper for court. Someone in the crowd whistled, and Brienne was sure it had nothing to do with the tilt happening below. Jaime let her go, his face smug. “For luck.”
Brienne ignored her own burning face, making her way down. Soon the final tilt would be over, the winner—either Khal Moro or Theon Greyjoy—would crown their queen of love and beauty, and the fence would be removed, leaving the court open and free for the melee. In those minutes, she stretched her limbs, checked her armour buckles, practiced her stance. With her under the wide tent were twenty or so people with their own blunted weapons of choice. Her competitors. Among them were the men she’d sparred before, Yara Greyjoy, a Mormont warrior-woman whose name Brienne could not remember, Lord Gendry Baratheon, Addam Marbrand, and even her erstwhile squire Podrick Payne. They were all of them seasoned war survivors. None of them were with child but Brienne.
“How are you feeling this afternoon, Ser Podrick?” Brienne asked, trying to quiet her jittery stomach with small talk. She was now aware that she might have eaten a tad too much. A blow to her middle might spill her lunch to the ground. She unstoppered her peppermint vial and quickly swiped the oil over her lips.
“I’m well, Ser,” Pod answered, though he seemed just as nervous as she. How strange. Pod is as capable a fighter as anyone here. She had trained him well, after all.
“That is good to hear,” she said anyway. It was not her place to interrogate him. He was a man grown, and he would tell her if aught was amiss.
“Yes. It’s been peaceful.” He flashed her a smile, kind and guileless. She had missed Pod. She had considered him a younger brother, mayhaps almost a son, and if not for his duties in the Westerlands, she would have invited him to stay in Evenfall Hall. He would make a fine master-at-arms, skilled but kind and patient enough to teach.
Curiously, she asked, “Who would you crown, if you win?” Jaime had told her to crown Sansa if she won, and after Arya had crowned Daenerys, it would be a reasonable option. Nonetheless, the idea sat wrong with Brienne, though she was not sure why.
“Well, I won’t. Win, that is. Everyone here’s got more experience than me.”
“Everyone here is older than you.”
“Well, I’d stand a fair chance against at least half of them, I think. But I don’t think I would get past Ser Sandor, much less you.” He fiddled with his belt. “Besides, the woman I am courting—she’s no lady, and she’s not here in Dragonstone.”
“You’re courting someone,” Brienne said, astonished. She shouldn’t have been. Pod was a man grown, now, no longer a hapless youth. And yet.
Pod looked down, a bashful smile lighting up his face. “Yes, Ser. It’s early days, still, but—well.”
Brienne asked him about the girl, and Pod told his erstwhile mentor about the woman, a clever and kind daughter of a midwife in the Westerlands. She had nursed him back to health when a fever had taken him.
Sometime in between, Yara Greyjoy joined their conversation and told them of her courtship with a woman, one with pale milky skin and hair like starlight, kind and gentle and proud. The longer Yara described this woman, the more she resembled Daenerys Targaryen. Yara’s eyes twinkled like it was a great jest, but her grin softened over time, and by the end of it she bore the look of a lovestruck maiden, even armoured and armed. Some of the men jeered at her, but some others bore the same look on their faces. Half the kingdom was in love with the dragon queen. Brienne knew this, she’d heard people say so many times, but ensconced in Tarth and away from the mainland, she had never seen it so blatantly before.
Brienne’s eyes caught Jorah Mormont’s, wearing his white cloak and golden armour even in the tourney. It was no secret that he loved the queen most of all, though the queen’s love for him was a different sort. He said naught as the competitors traded stories. Brienne thought about her short service in Renly’s Rainbow Guard, and she wondered. Had Renly lived would I bear Ser Jorah’s fate?
“That’s very pretty,” Pod said, breaking her out of her thoughts.
“Pardon me?”
Pod gestured to the kerchief wrapped around her wrist. “That kerchief. Is it a favour?”
“Oh,” Brienne exhaled, and it was almost a laugh. “Yes, it’s—Jaime made it for me.”
The horns sounded, cutting off Pod before he could comment further. They were to take their places. Brienne put on her helmet, stepping out under the afternoon sun, and as the kerchief shimmered under her sun, she thought—
Had Renly lived would I be with Jaime still?
Jaime watched the final tilt absently, unable to doze again now that Brienne had left to prepare for the melee. She’d smelled of peppermints, he recalled, but amidst the excitement and the people rubbing elbows with them, he had dropped the matter. When they'd dozed after lunch, she’d still smelled of peppermints, but he'd been too sleepy to ask.
The crowd cheered and Jaime realized the Dothraki khal had won the final tilt against Theon Greyjoy. A crown of violets was presented to him. He tossed it at Queen Sansa.
Jaime wondered if the khal truly wanted to court Sansa or if he merely found her beautiful, but Sansa inclined her head at Daenerys after donning the flower crown over her direwolf circlet. Once more, Jaime was grateful for his luck that he could live far away from these political schemes and diplomatic gestures. Life on Tarth was simple and easy, and he planned to keep it that way.
He watched as the contestants walked into the field, stopping to draw a number out of a bag before placing themselves on the assigned spots scattered around the field. Brienne was situated off-centre. Poor Sandor Clegane got a centre spot, surrounded by five contestants—one of whom was Yara Greyjoy with twin short swords, her grin feral—who were trading looks to promise a temporary truce. Pod’s number corresponded to a spot at the far edge, the lucky lad.
The horn sounded once more. The action began before the sound ended, a flurry of blades and fierce yells. Jaime leaned forward, as though he could will himself into the thick of it. Gods, but he missed a melee. His last tourney, he had been whole of body, but hollow inside. He had long forgotten what it felt like to be truly whole, to be something else other than his mask.
Until, of course, a lumbering wench had dragged him across half the continent, and it took him years until he’d realized she’d still had him on a tether, and all he could do was keep chasing her.
Whenever the next tourney happened, he would be there, and he would not be sitting with a broken leg. Brienne had suggested a hook, but in the middle of learning to sew and turning Tarth into a worthy trading post, it had been forgotten. Maybe when they come home, he would get one smithed. It would make his practices more interesting, even if nothing came out of it.
His mind went through all this, but his eyes stuck to the field, and not only on his lady wife. There were an ebb and flow to the fight. With no teams or loyalties set, alliances were temporary at best. Brienne, though, had no time for even the most fleeting of truces. The competitors had counted her as one to fight at all costs, and now she was trading blows with three others. Still fewer opponents than Clegane, because Jaime supposed no one really knew about that time she’d nearly killed the Hound.
Her movements were quick, clever, and instead of meeting blows head-on, she weaved around and deflected with the edge of her tourney sword and kite shield. She was no hammer, today. She was a needle. Jaime turned to see Arya Stark. There was only one Braavosi water dancer who could teach Brienne how to do this.
The question, of course, was why.
Jaime didn’t even know that Brienne was going to use a borrowed sword and wooden shield. He thought she would still use her favoured morning star paired with a heavy shield. The few conversations they’d had when he hadn’t been hiding at Tyrion’s study doing needlework, she never mentioned changing weapons. Besides, this style—the evasion and dodges, subtle side-steps, they would hardly come naturally to her. She had her whole life training with her size and strength as her advantage, and now her size would work against her, her strength rendered unused.
It was as if she had suddenly feared contact.
Another piece of a riddle. The peppermint, then this. But what was the answer?
Arya caught Jaime’s stare and jerked her head towards the field. “Watch,” she commanded him.
He turned back to watch. Brienne had felled two of her opponents, and the last one dropped under Jorah Mormont shield bash. The Lord Commander of the Queensguard now faced Brienne, and her focus narrowed to him, and only him. It was then that Lady Mormont—Jorah’s niece, a warrior like every other Mormont women—leapt up and towards Brienne’s flank, her sword held high in the sky.
Jaime’s warning yell was a reaction rather than a calculated move, a remnant of those long winter months when they fought by each other’s side against ice spiders and endless Others.
His voice should have been drowned by the noise of the swords and the cheers of the crowd, but Brienne’s head jerked anyway to check her flank, and she parried the Mormont woman’s blow with her shield. Lady Mormont’s weight and momentum splintered the wood and knocked Brienne back, but she didn’t fall. She pivoted on one foot, the other kicking the smaller woman. Lady Mormont flew three feet, landing on her side, and Pod descended upon her, leaving Brienne free to parry an incoming slash from Ser Jorah.
He was glad that his breeches were laced tight and his doublet fell past his knees, lest someone might notice the indecent attention he paid on his wife’s fighting.
Pod, somehow, took on the duty of guarding Brienne’s back—again—even though it might be the stupidest thing the boy had done, pinning him against two other opponents. Yet he stood there, immovable as a wall, as Brienne’s attention were arrested by Ser Jorah.
In the end, it was not Brienne who finally knocked Ser Jorah to the dust, but Clegane. That left three of them: Pod and Brienne against Clegane. Clegane was just about Jaime’s age, though, and though he was good, the absence of an actual threat of death dulled his edges. The man had no use for pride for its own sake. Soon, he yielded too.
Which left—against all odds—Podrick, against Brienne.
The lad had waded through half the field to once more squire for his Ser Lady, and now they had to face each other. It was hilarious. Jaime would laugh, if not for the way the two circled each other.
What most in attendance didn’t know was that Brienne had taught Pod to fight and thus she could read his every move, while Brienne’s movements were an odd bastard of the Braavosi water dance and her usual style. It should be to her advantage, but in her hesitance, half a shield’s parry and half a dodge had left enough room for Pod’s kite shield to slam into her middle, sending her back a few steps by the sheer force of it.
She then doubled down and emptied her stomach to the dirt.
The crowd gasped. Jaime half-stood, ignoring the pain shooting up his broken leg. Pod froze, no doubt mortified, his own weapons held limp by his sides.
Brienne straightened her spine, and before Pod could move, she charged headlong into the lad, dropping them both to the ground before pinning him with her sword to his neck.
Pod let go of his weapons. “I yield.”
Brienne stood and took off her helmet, wiping off her mouth with the back of a hand. She looked up to the stands then, wisps of hair sticking to her sweaty face, eyes bright. A victor.
The crowd roared on their feet; Jaime included. If before he ignored his aching leg, now he barely felt it.
Daenerys came down her dais. She still wore Arya’s crown. Delicately, the queen took a crown of fire lilies from Missandei, then walked up to Brienne. Her voice carried like a bell. “You fought well, Ser Brienne. Who would be your queen of love and beauty on this day?”
Brienne took the crown with bare hands—she had taken off her soiled and dirtied gloves and tucked them in her belt—and her eyes darted to Sansa Stark, briefly, before meeting his gaze. Brienne turned to the queen. “Your Grace, if women can be maesters and knights, surely love and beauty should not be the sole provenance of women?”
Daenerys’ smile was knowing. “Indeed, they should not. Would you crown a king of love and beauty, then?”
Brienne turned and met his gaze again, her eyes blue as the waters of Tarth and the fire of a wight dragon.
He could scarcely breathe.
“I would.”
If not for Brienne’s armour and Jaime’s aching leg, they wouldn’t have made it to their quarters. She saw the want on his face. As it stood, thankfully, Jaime merely insisted they returned to their quarters posthaste.
As soon as the doors closed behind them, Jaime pulled her down for a kiss, knocking the crown on his head askew in his haste. She indulged him, happily, her heart bursting with giddiness and joy, her blood still rushing after the melee. Her hands were everywhere—his jawline, tracing the line between his beard and bare skin, his arms, the coiled muscles tense under her touch, his ribcage, the heaves of his breathing—and it was Jaime who wrenched his head back and away with him first.
“Wench,” he growled, still a lion though silvered and crowned with flowers, “do not tease me right now.”
She nearly laughed before sobering under the heat of his gaze. His hand wound itself around a buckle by her side, one of several which held her breastplate together. He tugged at it, sharp, a demand.
She pushed his hand aside and undid the buckle, then the next, one by one until her breastplate hung loosely around her frame. He helped her pull it off over her head, placing it on the settee by their legs. The tassets around her hips went next, then, along with the swordbelt. He looked down on the padding around her middle, eyebrows knitted in confusion. “You don’t usually wear this much padding.”
Brienne undid the knots holding the padding together, and when it was off, she dropped it to the settee. Her thin shift was wet with her sweat, sticking to her skin, nearly see-through on some places. Jaime’s eyes darkened as he took her in. Before he could touch her again, she pulled back a step. “When we got here, I started feeling sick in the morning. I thought it was leftover seasickness, or I’d eaten something wrong, or—well. A few days ago, I went to Maester Sarella and she said—”
Brienne saw comprehension dawning on Jaime’s face, and so it came to no surprise to her when he completed her sentence, “you’re with child.”
“I am. The peppermint—you asked about it, Jaime, and I didn’t know how to tell you this morning—it was to help with the sickness. I wanted to tell you, but we barely spent any time together,” she pleaded. She felt like she should apologize, though for what mistake she knew not.
Jaime waved her pleas aside. “I could barely blame you. I was the one avoiding you if you recall.”
“You are not angry?”
“I’m a little angry I didn’t figure it out myself, not at you. I trust you with my life. It would be foolish if I didn’t trust you with our child’s life.” He touched her sides, then, carefully, and she did not shy away. His arms slipped around her waist, and he dropped his head to her shoulder. “You retched, earlier, but I believe it was only your lunch?” There was a tremor in their embrace, and she wasn’t sure if it was him or her.
Brienne had let her guard down, inadvertently, being too familiar with the way Pod fought. As she had retched, she had been snapped back to the present, and the anger and fear for her babe had taken her to charge him and end it as soon as she could. “Yes. I think so,” she said to Jaime. After the melee, the maester had pulled her aside and asked her myriad questions. That Brienne hadn’t bled meant the babe lived still. “The maester asked me to come to her should I start bleeding or something else changed, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
“Good,” Jaime said, and that was that. His hands roamed over her sweat-slicked skin, under her shift, until they rested over her abdomen, still as flat as ever. “I can’t wait,” he breathed against her collarbone.
“What for?”
“You. Round and soft with our child. Your feet will be sore, and you will bear it stiffly until there’s only the both of us and you will blame me. I accept all blame, by the way. I will wash your back, brush your hair, and massage your feet, and it will be difficult for us to find ways to make love as you grow bigger, but we’ll find a way.” His hand, meanwhile, unlaced the knots of her breeches with little difficulty. How needlework had changed him. “You will be cursing and yelling in the birthing bed, and though the women tending to you will doubtless insist I stay outside, you will ask them very nicely to let me stay and hold your hand, then you will clutch until my hand is white and berate me for imposing this burden on you. Then the maester, the woman one sent by the queen to tend to you, will catch the babe and cut its cord and put it on your breasts, and you will forget all curses because it’s there, and beautiful, and perfect. It’s yellow-haired, of course, and it has your eyes, and I will cry. If you’ve finally forgiven me for putting a babe in you, maybe you’ll let me hold it—no, her, our firstborn will be a girl—and maybe you’ll let me put another in you.” He pulled her breeches down and she slipped them off her legs, greaves and all, and at last, she was bare before him except for his favour around her wrist. He took the wrist in his hand and kissed the palm of her hand.
Brienne’s eyes were brimming with tears, her throat clogged with something unspeakable. Words failed her, as they often did, so she pushed him to sit down on the settee—he’d been putting weight on that leg for long enough—and knelt between his legs to undress him in turn. He smiled at her, but there was neither mockery nor teasing in her eyes. She set his flower crown aside before taking off his doublet and tunic. When his chest was bare, he took the crown back and placed it back on his head with an altogether too smug expression. She unstrapped his golden hand, and she felt him release a breath as the weight was taken off him. He had explained to her, as they took their lunch, about how the hand had carried the weight of the embroidery hoop, holding it in place. His skin had chafed under the straps, she noticed. She would put some ointment on it later. She went and took off his breeches, leaving the splint on, until he, too, was bare like his nameday, or close enough.
Here he was, her king of love and beauty, and how much she loved him, and how beautiful he was.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his voice raspy.
“I think,” Brienne said, carefully, “I think I crowned the right person.”
“A pity I couldn’t do the lists as we planned. I’d win, then you’d have to wear my crown when fighting in the melee.” There were laugh lines etched deep on both sides of his eyes. “Or maybe not during the melee, lest it gets knocked into the dirt and stomped on. It would be a waste of a crown.”
Brienne frowned. It was customary, of course, for a married lord to crown his wife queen of love and beauty when he won, but surely he knew that the crown would have been a mockery on her ugly face?
“Oh, hush.”
Brienne’s frown turned into a stare. “Hush? I didn’t say anything.”
Jaime rolled his eyes. “Give me a little credit here, wife. Your frowns are so loud. I know all of them.”
“Do you.”
“Yes, and this one says there’s no way I could be a queen of love and beauty because I am not beautiful.” Jaime waited for Brienne to refute him, but she couldn’t, because once again he had read her mind. He continued, “I will tell you now, you are beautiful. You have the most astonishing eyes. Your figure is a most gallant one, and we should both agree that gallantry is a beautiful thing and not reserved for only men. At night, under candlelight, you look like a statue of one of the Gods.”
Tears welled up in her eyes again, and Jaime cradled her face carefully with a hand and a bare stump as if she was made of glass and not bone and muscle and sinew. She wanted to disprove him, an innate need to win, to be right, but his certainty was such that she was compelled to believe him. So, instead of insisting on a fight she couldn’t win, she asked, “Which God?”
“I’m not sure. The Warrior. The Maiden. The Mother.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Your beauty is not a delicate rose, this much I will admit, but will you say that the pine trees on Tarth not beautiful? Would you call the waters around Tarth ugly?”
Brienne could bear it no longer, then, his speeches and accolades too bright and too warm like the sun, and she surged forward to capture his mouth in a kiss.
He smiled into her mouth, she could feel it, and she felt as if she was catching fire. His hand moved to cup her breast and his stump slipped between her legs, dipping at the wetness that had been pooling on her slit before rubbing her nub, round and round and round.
It was dizzying.
She tensed and convulsed, her peak arriving sooner than she thought it would. She pulled away from him, then, for a few moments. As she gathered her breath back, he said, “Oh.”
“What is it?”
“You match the beads,” Jaime said.
She did. Her flush was so that even her collarbones were red. “Oh, hush,” she said, now, echoing his tone earlier.
“I must apologize,” Jaime continued, his smirk unbearable, “While it’s true you’re no delicate rose, I shouldn’t have forgotten other flowers. You’re clearly a peony in bloom.”
Brienne’s eyebrow twitched. “I said,” she growled, reaching down between them to grip his cock, “hush.”
Jaime’s breath stuttered but showed no reaction otherwise to her touch, and his words spilled without faltering even as she started pumping his cock in a steady rhythm. “You always try to shut me up, wench. Why is that? What is it you find so unbearable with my voice? Is it that I call you beautiful?”
“Yes,” she hissed. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Why should it?” he asked, and now his hand slipped to join his hand, two fingers slipping easily into her cunt. “It’s nothing more than the truth. There are many truths that are embarrassing, I suppose, but this isn’t one of them. I should think, in a perfect world, all men should find their wives beautiful.”
She opened her mouth to argue with him, but a moan escaped instead as he curled his fingers in her, hitting a spot that never failed to make her knees weak. She shuddered, then batted his hand away. “Stop.”
He did, leaning back on the settee, looking up to her face. “Are you alright?”
“Yes. Just—” She moved so she had both legs astride him. “I need you inside me.”
“Come, then,” he said, anchoring her with his hand on her right hip and his stump on another, and she aligned the tip of his cock with her opening, and slowly, she slid down. He moaned, then, and for a long while they spoke not in words but in sounds and touches. The sound of skin slapping against skin was loud in the cavernous sitting room, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She rode him, and their movements jostled the crown on his head, though it remained there, precarious but stubborn. Not unlike him, she supposed.
He got his stump on her nub again, rubbing circles, and his hand pinched and played with her breast until she cried and convulsed around him, until all her muscles went taut and after, loose, her limbs draped over him, her hips stuttering in their rhythm, and he followed soon, spilling inside her.
When Brienne regained her wits, she slipped off him, the air suddenly too hot for her, and sat on the cool polished dragonglass table in front of the settee they had thoroughly defiled. His seed spilled from between her legs. “I suppose there’s no need for moon tea now,” she said. She’d only taken them so she would not increase before the tourney, besides. The plan had been, from the beginning, to let nature run its course after that. Not that it had stopped his seed, or her womb, to make their decisions for them anyway.
Jaime found this terribly funny, somehow. He laughed and laughed, then when he, too, gathered his wits, he said, “I don’t think a woman had won the melee before this, much less one with child. My love, do you have any idea how absolutely singular you are?”
“People often say so, though none as embarrassingly as you.” The afterglow had left her in better humour than before, and his compliments weren’t so grating to her now. She stood up and went to the bedroom, pulling on a robe and grabbing another from their trunk for Jaime. When they were properly covered, she rang for a bath, telling them to not bother with heating the water.
A knock sounded on the door and Brienne opened it to the grinning faces of Ara and Merry, each carrying pails of fresh spring water.
“Your bath, milady,” said Merry, perfectly polite even though her smirk betrayed more.
Brienne opened the door and the two women happily entered, neither of them seemingly perturbed by the smell of sex and scattered clothes. Brienne was a little grateful that her own maids were sent to deliver the bath, as they had been accustomed to the habits of their lord and lady, and by Jaime’s accounts, the maids even approved of them.
With familiarity, however, came the lack of decorum, stoked in part by the lord they had spending time with. Ara looked at the clothes strewn about, and with a jaunty smile she said, “The crown suits you, milord.”
Jaime, lounging with abandon on the settee in his half-closed robe, tipped the crown as though it was a hat. “I thank you, Mistress Ara. My lady wife is so taken with the favour I gave her that she thanked me with a crown.”
Ara held back a giggle. “I trust you will need no more instruction in needlework, then.”
“Indeed, and we may find a new task for you yet. I talked to my brother, and Brienne approved of it. We’ve arranged, that if you wish it, you may have a place in the queen’s ship.”
Ara turned to Brienne, quick as a whip. “Truly, milady?”
Brienne smiled, forgetting her embarrassment in the sight of the girl’s joy. “You would always have a place in Evenfall Hall, but Jaime told me you long to see the world. The queen often journeys to Essos, to care for her cities there. If you want it, you may go with them.”
“I do want it,” Ara said, joy and wonder writ in her wide eyes. “Thank you.”
“Ah, well, I couldn’t seem to shed my Lannister upbringing. We always do pay our debts. You taught me needlework,” Jaime said. “You and Merry both, but I’ve no idea what to get for Merry.”
“Coin will do, milord,” Merry said, wry.
Jaime barked out a laugh. “My brother would like you.”
The maids filled the tub in the bedroom and left, then, smiling and congratulating Brienne on her victory before they closed the doors behind them.
Brienne undid her braid, the hair falling in loose waves. It would not last long, she knew, as her hair always were stubbornly straight, even though it was no longer brittle, but she rather liked it like this. From the look on Jaime’s face, he seemed to agree.
“Come,” Brienne said, pulling Jaime’s arm around her shoulders. He could hobble on his crutch, but her body already missed him. “Let us wash up and dress for supper.” Their shadows were getting longer, and soon they would have to light up the sconces.
Brienne insisted on washing Jaime first. He sat on a low stool as she efficiently cleaned him with a wet cloth, washing around his splint. After she washed him, she submerged herself in the tub, and he washed and worked scented oils into her hair, massaging her scalp lightly as he did so.
As Brienne dried off, Jaime hobbled and went somewhere, returning soon with a folded cloth in his arms. “My lady knight,” he said, “I would like to claim another prize for winning our wager.”
Brienne frowned. There was something terrifying in Jaime’s eyes. “What will you ask?”
“You wore my favour already, but now, I would ask you to try this on,” he said, offering the cloth to her, except now that she could see well it was one of her tunics, a deep blue one he liked exceedingly well on her. She had packed it for the feast, but it had been plain, then. Now, though—
She took it from him, unfolding it, and his designs unfurled before her. A golden sun on one shoulder, a silver crescent on another, and silver starbursts throughout. The fabric was stiff from the embroidery, accentuating her broad shoulders, the effect oddly similar to the pauldrons of an armour set. The collar and cuffs of the tunic had been covered by the same silk that made the kerchief, its light silver-blue contrasting to the darker blue of the cotton. The laces keeping it close at the front had been replaced with ribbons cut from the same silk. Over the silk collar and cuffs, Jaime had embroidered little starbursts in silver, densely packed, and over the rest of the tunic, more starbursts were scattered loosely. The hem, which should fall around her hips, had been filled with the same rose-colored beads, sewn in waves mimicking the ocean. Taken as a whole, the tunic was an image of the waters and skies of Tarth, similar to the designs on her kerchief.
“I only ask you to try it on,” Jaime said, gently. “I understand if it is too ostentatious for your taste. I got carried away with the designs, after all. If you don’t want to wear it to the feast, I packed your second-best tunic in the trunk. But if you dismiss it, let it be because it isn’t to your taste, and not because of some fool reason like it is too beautiful for you.”
Brienne nodded stiffly. She remembered the last time she had to put on something ‘pretty’. It had been the hideous pink dress at Harrenhal, and she had to fight a bear in it. This, though, was nothing like that. It was already her tunic. Jaime had merely embellished it, and he did so while fully intending for her to wear it. It would be ungrateful if she didn’t even try it on.
She pulled on her loose shift and breeches, and at last the tunic. She laced the front expertly, then tucked the laces in the collar. She turned to him. A smile bloomed on his face as he gestured to the mirror by the trunks.
She had avoided looking at the mirror as she dressed, but she could avoid it no further. She took in her mirror image.
Her hair fell lank and damp around her shoulders, but barring that, the shoulders did look like decorated pauldrons, the cuffs silver like gauntlets, and the hem could almost be tassets. Her fears evaporated. There were no corsets, no dress. Only her own tunic, except there was nothing only about it. Jaime had sewn her an armour, one fit to be worn to a feast at court, which was a battle by its own rights. This tunic felt right, more than anything. She could be a proper lady, in this tunic, though it had no skirt. She could be a proper knight, and not the kind that fought bloody and dirty, but a gallant one, a handsome one, the kind they would sing about in ballads. She felt almost beautiful.
Jaime appeared behind her, folding his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Well?” he asked.
Brienne bit her lip, and tentatively, carefully, she said, “I think—I think I would like to wear this to the feast.”
Jaime’s answering smile outshined the sun and moon and stars of her tunic.
They arrived at the feast late, the knight with her glittering tunic and her lord husband with a crown of fire lilies atop his head, and songs of their love and beauty would be sung in many halls, many years after.