[color=92278f]featuring Dyanna Dayne ( [@Vanq] )[/color]

[INDENT][COLOR=SLATEGRAY][CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/awoiaf-rp/images/6/6f/Summerhall-0.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20181102224626[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] S U M M E R H A L L[/color]
[color=#8B1A1A]S U M M E R H A L L[/color][/center][/b][/h1][/sup]
[color=#8B1A1A][sup][i]After Daemon's Escape[/i][/sup][/color][/CENTER]
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[COLOR=darkgray][indent]"You are a coward brother, do you know this?" Maekar could not keep the bitterness from his tone, even if he admittedly regretted it. Less and less did he have an opportunity to spend time alone with his brother, outside of their duties, and even though he felt that bitter bile rising in his throat he wished he had not spent their time thus.

"To not risk the wrath of Dyanna Dayne? Label me a traitor and a knave, brother, for I would not wish that upon any man. Had I not known her to love you dearly, I would have fought against your match for fear of your life." There he went again, dismissing Maekar's churlish judgement with the easy charm that worked on court as much as it worked on family.

Maekar could not understand the traitors not for their grasping of gain over loyalty. Men were simple things, he could feel that in his own heart. What he could never understand was how any man could speak with Baelor and not feel like there was a true King of Westeros, for what else or who else could there be? He was loathe to admit that in his darker thoughts the sting of envy always rose.

"I suppose you have some excuse, that your duties call you away immediately, and you cannot linger to bring this news to my young family yourself." Maekar scowled atop his steed as he looked out over Summerhall from their vantage points atop the rolling hills.

"I would not relent a chance to see my youngest brother's children if I did not have dire need." Baelor looked to him with eyes of genuine pleading. Believe me brother dearest they spoke to him, and in his failure, he did so.

Maekar let out a grunt, before he pulled on his reins. "She will be worse for you not being there, brother. You both combined are a far lesser burden than you are alone."

"You know, so well, how to treat those you love, Maekar." The Prince of the Realm smiled in passing to his brother, before he was away, back to the company of the armed escorts who had brought him thus, and onwards to greater battles. Maekar was already riding away, although he eventually could not resist a look back towards his brother, only to find an empty horizon.

"Cunt." Maekar swore, before spurring his horse into a gallop back towards the palace.[/indent][/COLOR]

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[COLOR=darkgray][indent]The pages were quick to attend him as the Prince of Summerhall rode into his courtyard. The grand estate was a work of art and for many a generation people would proclaim the artistry of Dyanna. What they would not record was the secret heart of a poet that hid within the brutal exterior of Maekar Targaryen, and how every act of beauty within Summerhall was a reflection of their love.

It was a far more clean legacy than their children might prove.

"Where is the Lady Dayne?" Maekar spoke to the man who took the reins of his steed as he swung out of the saddle, immediately discarding his riding gloves into the hands of another page.

"She is in the Northern solar, your highness, with her cousin."

"Seven above." Maekar swore, as he made his way within the palace of a thousand dreams.[/indent][/COLOR]

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[COLOR=darkgray][indent]"Fuck off, Ulrick." Maekar announced as he entered the splendour of the solar, each perfectly positioned pane of glass highlighting his Targaryen beauty even as his words dispelled them.

He didn't wait for the man to leave before he claimed her lips, hungry and grasping as their first fumbling intimates had been. She had been sitting as he swept in. Reading or gossiping with her Dornish kin he didn't care, for his presence interrupted it in a moment.

Maekar lost himself in the moment, in how the sun caught in her hair and spun it to gold, how the more caramel tone of her skin to his made him think of warmth and home. How even in the most conservative of gowns he saw the shape of the form he knew from heel to crown.

The chair clattered to the ground as he bore down on her, the weight of him toppling it backwards but not as such space as to harm her, but not so much that he had a thought to care for the state of their gentle wicker furniture.

"I love you." He breathed desperately through the kisses, even as his mouth trailed down her neck.

It was not the first time his devotion had taken her unawares, that her consciousness was slower to react than her body knew to be. There was something in her that had always recognised him before thought could intervene and her fingers found laces at his back with a familiarity that managed still to feel like discovery, tracing him the way she had learned to read star-charts as a girl. It was instinct and love that she gave herself over to.

Her lips parted for him first by the force of it and then in return, of her own desire and longing. It was always just beneath the surface and now it eagerly rose to meet his. They were both from houses of flame, she had mused before, both born of the sky and of things the maesters could only explain poorly and with great embarrassment. It had never surprised her that they burned so easily together.

"You taste of the road." She breathed against him when her mouth pulled away from his, her senses returning slowly, reluctantly. It wasn't a complaint but it was recognition of something and it pushed through to the forefront of her mind.

He had not just been out amongst their gardens, nor the training yard, nor inspecting their men for any number of flaws that he would surely find. She knew all those scents of him and more, had learned him more than she ever thought a woman could know a man, more than she had thought she would ever want to.

She drew a longer breath and tipped her head back so that she could see him properly.

Her purple eyes met his, violet shade to violet shade and her hand rose to trace the lines of his face with a softness that belied the still simmering hunger for more. There was a familiar set to his jaw, beyond their shared desire. His brow bore a furrow, one she had seen before, one that she knew had a name.

Her thumb traced over it, an attempt to smooth it only to have it reappear as soon as she lifted her touch. It was as stubborn as the man who wore it.

"So," Dyanna spoke without attempting to smooth away the rasp in her voice, the one he always managed to put there. "What has happened this time, my love." It was a statement as much as a question. Her hands dropped to his chest, curling tightly into the fabric that separated them still and drew him closer. "Where has my husband ridden hard from, and who was he with that he returns to me in such desperate need," the leg hooked around his waist pressed him nearer, a nudge that was both demanding and teasing, "that he does not first bathe nor even brush the dust away, hm?"

Her eyes held his, knowing and playing at innocence at once. The lightness was deliberate, she left open the possibility that she was wrong, that he did simply need her and there was nothing more to it. She could hope that he would say so and they would carry on with their love, there on the floor, uncaring of what had been interrupted.

But the letter she had been discussing with Ulrick sat folded still against her chest, and her cousin's face before the interruption had not been that of a man discussing idle gossip.

Maekar didn't answer her immediately, as her own body reacted faster than thought to him, so too did his own. He was less poetic than most of his family, and certainly his wife. He would not put such things in metaphors of flame or mystery. Just her, that was all the poetry he required. Another few kisses he placed on her skin before his mind recovered enough to be aware that she was expecting an answer in more than just physicality.

Mores the pity.

"My brother." He spoke, finally, with a rasping gasp that was only slightly tainted with the insolence of being interrupted. He didn't clarify which brother, there was only one there could really be that would drive him with such importance of duty. "I was returning from the capital after speaking with my father, they had a plan to seize Daemon. It would seem hard evidence of plotted treason had finally been found." Even as he spoke his fingers traced her skin, the pale amber of her skin a beacon that called him to far more than duty. "Whatever the plan was, it did not work. They wish for me to ride with Rhaegal, so that he might speak kind words to those whose oaths are not so dependable." That was enough of those words for the moment, as he returned to enjoying the taste of her.

Even in the moment though he couldn't not entirely dispel the bitter thoughts of frustration, and where that flared too brightly his kisses left the marks of his teeth, as the press of his hands began to mar the surface of her soft skin.

"I wanted more time." He finally breathed through his contact with her, his lips barely lifting from their touch.

She leaned into his affections, but with a steady enough head that she wouldn't allow herself to be swept away before she had the full truth of it. [i]Baelor[/i], of course. The full truth of things never took long for her husband to explain, a blessing to have a man of so few words he always offered them in a way that they could move on quickly to other, better, things.

He spoke, and her fingers' caresses against his face slowed and deepened, ran down his neck to the top of his shoulders, kneaded into them as comfort and desire still. Her lips, though, wrinkled into a small look of disgust. "Baelor is now my least favourite of your brothers, I expect you'll inform him of this change." The look of faux anger dispelled as quickly as she had worn it, from the new kisses and the way his hands manipulated her skin in kind.

Dyanna breathed deeply. Time, they had had so much of it and still not enough. "Begging would not keep you here." Hers or his own pleas to the gods, she knew he would go and do as he was asked — told — to do. "And I would beg to go with you but I will not leave Summerhall to chance." Her fingers wrapped around his chin, willing him to look into her eyes once more. "Let's not waste what little we have left, hm?"

She would shoulder the burden as much as him, and she would find pleasure in his displeasure at doing so. "But if you leave me here alone with yet another son growing," she said, her voice low and unhurried, the softness of it a threat, "I will hand you over to that pretender myself." She pulled his lips to hers before, breathing him in deeply, desperate to retain this moment for whatever the next days brought them.[/indent][/COLOR]

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[CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/93/63/05/936305d81e72f976f6bdf23255a4ea19.jpg[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] T H E   R I V E R L A N D S[/color]
[color=#8B1A1A]T H E   R I V E R L A N D S[/color][/center][/b][/h1][/sup]
[color=#8B1A1A][sup][i]Weeks Later[/i][/sup][/color][/CENTER]
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[COLOR=darkgray][indent]"What do you mean, you lost him?"

"We arrived into Gulltown, your grace, we were there when they declared for the Black Dragon and —"

"They declared themselves traitors, loyal men of the realm need not address them by whatever they wish to call themselves these days." Maekar's fury was not usually a quiet thing, but for now it simmered as the rider addressed him. They were a party of three men and each looked more sorry for himself than the last. "Carry on."

"The Prince commanded us to disperse throughout the city and seek our own method of escape, before they could move to arrest any of us. I think they thought to catch us off guard, but we were already on the move." Another one of them answered as the first speaker stumbled over his words for a few moments.

"So, not only do you not arrive with my brother, but, in fact, the rebels may have him in chains?" Maekar could not help but to bring a hand up to his features, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he contemplated the matter.

"It was as he commanded y —"

"But not as your King commanded!" Maekar suddenly exclaimed, hurling a particularly solid piece of ration bread at the third man who made to speak. The royal party had been travelling light and fast since leaving the Reach, ever mindful of the scouts of the enemy. Some of the rations had begun to go bad in the meantime, and now made for ideal non-lethal projectiles. Even the men not assailed by weaponised tack bread found themselves in silence for a moment. "It is a good thing that our foes are not humble, for surely we would have heard, had they already claimed a royal hostage." Maekar exhaled, turning his attention away from the three men as he regarded the cloud streaked sky for a few moments.

[i]Seven above lend me strength.[/i]

"Fall in with the rest of the party, once you have recovered from your journey you may join our hunting parties, see if you can lighten my mood with good fare." When no other punishment seemed to be incoming, the three men bowed gratefully before moving off to the rest of the camp, while it dawned upon Maekar that matters of diplomacy with the Freys was now his burden alone.[/indent][/COLOR]

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