Chapter Text
The waves of the sea gently rock the royal ship, wind billowing the crested Kiramman flag tied to the mast.
“Do you think she’ll be angry?”
Princess Caitlyn Kiramman leans against the ship’s railing, her blue eyes unfocused as they depart from Keystone, her family’s ancient seat before they claimed the Gilded Throne.
The question is not needing of an answer. She already knows it. Her Queen mother has already been so vocal in her ire these past few years after her father’s passing. Since she’d been named heir, every house in Piltover has flooded her mother with parchment.
All marriage proposals.
Caitlyn had merely scoffed at the idea. But, with wine stained lips and screaming words, Caitlyn had stormed from the Gold Keep on dragon back, the only reason for her returning steps close to her now, a small smirk stretching the scarred divot on her full lips .
“About which part? That you didn’t pick a suitor or that you ended the tour three months early?”
Caitlyn gnaws on the inside of her cheek and squeezes her eyes shut. Her knight chuckles, nudging her shoulder lightly as she joins her against the railing. Caitlyn sighs, frustration boiling right under her skin as she imagines the crass words awaiting her.
She feels a hand on hers, prying her fingers from tearing at her own cuticles, the habit so ingrained she doesn’t even notice herself doing it anymore. Blood dares to stain the skin and Caitlyn hears her mother’s voice in her mind, how uncomely her hands are. But when Caitlyn glances up, soft silver eyes send a shiver down her spine and warmth blooms up her arm from where Ser Violet has yet to move her gloved hand.
Her knight, sworn to her and her alone. Born of nothing and yet fills her entire heart.
“Your mother is likely to be angry but the choice is still yours, Cait.”
Cait.
Her chest tightens at the sound of it. Not Princess or Your Highness . The agreement between them to abandon titles whilst in private still brings a pink tinge to her cheeks. It had been a welcomed change of pace seeing how the knight is her age. And with no friends without veiled stringed, she’d ached for the simplicity of it. Of just being Cait. And Vi is Vi.
“It isn’t my fault that half the suitors were my grandmother’s age or just…horrendously ugly.” Men goes unspoken, her preferences not a secret between them. The tour had been her mother’s compromise in the matter of her marriage.
“Choose him yourself as I chose your father.”
But Vi laughs, the sound so delightful it forces her own laugh out of her throat. “Lord Bolbolk was certainly…” Vi grimaces and shakes her head, seeing them both to a fit of laughter.
“Old,’ they both agree.
Vi keeps laughing, the skin around her eyes crinkling as the emerging sun glints off her white armor. The red cloak attached at her shoulders ruffles behind her, the cloth given to her by Caitlyn herself when she made her vows before the rest of the Queensguard. She blushes at the memory.
“I wish I could just take you on Nyra and live in the free cities. Be done with all of this trouble,” she mutters, her own words not sinking in until much too late.
The knight takes a sharp breath, her hand only just now lifting from where it’s stayed clasped over Caitlyn’s. They stare at each other for a long moment, breathless in the sea air.
This isn’t the first of these moments. Of the lingering looks and longing touches. They’ve only grown more frequent as of late, whether initiated by Caitlyn or the knight she isn’t sure. Only that she craves them so fiercely she thinks she may implode.
But Vi has been duty bound since she dared to enter the capitol with nothing but her name and skill, immediately catching Caitlyn’s eye as she threw Ser Jayce Talis from his horse at her nineteenth name-day tourney. The very favor she threw Ser Vi that day still sits tied to the knight’s belt. But she never deviated from her stoic position as Caitlyn’s sworn protector, however thin that line between them has become, the knight never crosses it.
“Well I suppose she’s finally big enough to saddle two,” Vi chuckles, rubbing the back of her neck with a large hand, her wild red hair only growing longer and more unruly with age.
“We would only eat your favorite,” Caitlyn teases with an embarrassed smirk, hoping she would read her sentiment as a flirtatious tease instead of the truth.
“Cake?” Vi laughs, her brows pinched in bewilderment. Caitlyn hums with a nod.
“The little ones you love so much.”
Vi raises a curious brow, as if actually considering the offer.
“That golden beast of yours scares me still,” she admits after a few moments. “She would surely burn me to a crisp if I so much as touched her.”
Caitlyn rolls her eyes playfully, this not being the first comment like this either. “She adores you. You would be dead by now otherwise.”
Vi merely gives her a deadpan expression, her mouth twisting in disbelief. Another weightless laugh bubbles out of her chest at the sight, endless affection daring to burst from every inch of her body when her knight’s eyes soften.
“Princess, we are preparing to port,” a guard announces, reminding Caitlyn they’re not alone. Vi heeds the reminder as well, taking a cautious step away from her, crisp, cold air taking her place. Caitlyn sighs again, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and prepares to face the wrath of her mother.
And wholly unprepared to unearth the reason she’s returning without a suitor.
_________________
Golden fury surely awaits her.
The throne room is empty when she arrives, her shoes clacking against the stone floor. Sunlight casts through stained glass, allowing for a myriad of colors to paint her mother’s hardened features.
The throne has aged her, as if the metal forged by her foremothers seeks her very soul. Wrinkles that shouldn’t be there sculpt her brow and eyes, the death of her father adding to the weight of the chair she currently occupies.
Every step she takes cements the stone in her gut, dread acting like a second cloak around her shoulders as she approaches. The only comfort is the echo of her steps, the knight staying close enough for her scent to permeate. Smoke and earth and warm honey.
“Five weeks.”
Caitlyn stops before the steep steps leading to the throne, her mother glaring down at her. But there’s something more etched onto her features. It sinks her heart further. She appears tired. So tired.
“Hello to you too, Mother,” Caitlyn exhales.
“Your Grace,” Vi murmurs behind her, but is promptly ignored.
“Five weeks and every suitor sent away. Do you have no shame, child?” She rubs the spot between her brows, her crown heavy enough to cause migraines.
“My shame?” Caitlyn seethes, her anger alight again. “What of yours? You are Queen of Piltover and yet you’re content to see your only heir sent off to a castle just to squeeze out heirs!”
Queen Cassandra stands then, taking up all the air in the massive expanse of the room. “You must marry and protect yourself. Without an heir our house is in danger, you know this. I’ve explained this countless times,” she takes a step down, her stature only growing despite the closing distance. But when Caitlyn doesn’t budge, the argument tired even for her, her mother finally shouts, “Even I had to marry– I am not above the law, Caitlyn!”
“You are the law,” Caitlyn counters.
“What would you have me do?”
Caitlyn starts, not expecting that question. “You already know.” She’s uttered her desires only once before. Her wish to marry a woman if she had to marry at all. Her mother hadn’t been angry at the notion, confessing to her own similar wishes when she was her age. But the answer was the same then as it is now.
“You know the order of things. Hundreds of years of traditions and duty cannot be broken simply because you demand it so. Is it not enough that I have given you the freedom to choose?”
Caitlyn takes a step back, hurt reddening her cheeks. She dares to look over her shoulder, her heart aching at the sight of the woman behind her, the knight she chose, images of a life she’s only scarcely let herself have in the light of the moon.
When she meets her mother’s eyes she can’t keep the words at bay. “When I am queen, I will make a new order.”
She ignores her mother’s calls as she marches from the throne room, her heart following on her heels.
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Caitlyn huffs indignantly at the sight before her. Knights adorning the color of their houses stand with rigid backs in her mother’s throne room, their banners held in hand as they watch her.
All but one.
Her nineteenth name day as well as the passing of her father have left a chill in the palace, the past six months only evident in the turning of the leaves. Her mother grows more tired by the day, the distance between them growing in a thick stretch of bitterness.
Her council bickers endlessly, making small grabs for power. Battles to the east along the coast are a constant cause for tension. The most recent bid for action is what sees her in the throne room now. Observing and choosing a new knight for the Queensguard.
“Ser Ezreal of House Cormond–” Sevika drones as she motions for the knight to step forward. The Lord Commander lists his accomplishments, none of which make it to Caitlyn’s ears. For she’s far too distracted by brazen red hair and hunched shoulders.
“On his recent journey from Trannit, he brought a would-be poacher to justice.” The words are tinted with a sneer that makes the bannerless knight below snort. Caitlyn likes the sound.
Sevika sighs as she finishes, eyeing Caitlyn with a look that illustrates exactly how Caitlyn feels. Unimpressed. Caitlyn stares down at the knight, scarcely recognizing him from her name-day tournament as well. He begged for her favor, if she recalls correctly. That is, of course, before she joined the joust herself against her mother’s knowledge and wishes.
Which brings her back to the stormy eyes watching her now. Her face is guarded yet calm. Eyes seeking and expressive. Scars she can see from where stands conjure questions of where they came from. How they might taste–
“You might thank him for his service, Princess,” Mel Medarda whispers in her ear, not in a condescending tone, but in a way that reminds her of her surroundings.
“We thank you for your loyal service to Crown, Ser,” Caitlyn says, forcing a tight-lipped smile. The knight grimaces and steps back into place, gripping the pole of his banner a little tighter.
This is ridiculous. She cannot sit here on her pedestal to choose her sworn protector amongst a gaggle of noble tourney knights. With a frustrated sigh, Caitlyn moves from her perch just below the throne, her steps light as she descends the stairs, her gown dragging behind her.
“Princess! Princess Caitlyn,” Mel calls after her, Caitlyn holds a hand up to silence her. When she reaches the bottom, she stands at the center of the throne room, a myriad of eyes watching her with her caution. As though she were a dragon ready to burn them all where they stand. Again, all but one.
“Have any of you seen combat?” she dares to ask. It was the first question she wanted to ask the moment she entered the room, the answer already clear in the nuisance of their house banners flooding the throne room, decorative feathers and jewels hanging from all of them. Peacocks among wolves.
They all stare at her with red stained cheeks. “Real combat,” Caitlyn clarifies when one of the knights begins to step forward, his stature of someone who’s barely seen the sun outside of a brothel. He steps back only for the nameless knight to take a step forward.
Her face betrays nothing but Caitlyn can see a red tinge under a bridge of freckles. Her heart flutters in her chest at the sight of such long lashes and a small braid in the knight's wild hair. Piercings and ink paint her exposed features and crestless armor covers the rest.
Caitlyn doesn’t recall closing the distance, something in the knight acting as a siren call to the princess. “You,” Caitlyn states simply. It isn’t a judgement or an accusation. But remembrance. The way her gloved fingers felt when taking the favor from Caitlyn’s hands, her helmet still hiding the whole of her face.
“The one and only, Princess,” she quips quietly. She doesn’t bow her head as the others had when she met them at eye level. No. This knight raises her chin. Not in defiance but in something Caitlyn can only describe as a challenging reverence.
I dare you to choose me as I am.
Caitlyn smirks, something haughty and, if her mother were here, unbecoming.
Only if you choose me, too.
“Tell me, Ser Violet Hound, of the combat you’ve faced. And why should I choose you over the knight of noble houses,” she says as though she were asking for a secret. The knight before her licks her lips before her mouth twists into something Caitlyn can't read.
She tries to express through her eyes what she already knows before the knight even speaks. I choose you.
“I was a prisoner in a Noxus camp after being flung overboard in the Guardian's Sea. I fought as a gladiator until I won my freedom. And when I returned, I was a foot-soldier in the battle of Ironwater which led to Lord Vanderson Hound knighting me. And now, I stand before you, ready to serve you, Princess. With no title to my name but this,” she says, holding the indigo kerchief with her own house crest embroidered in the top left corner.
Caitlyn’s heart thunders in her chest as Ser Violet’s words settle in her ears, the look in her eyes melting her resolve. She’s done pretending her decision is wavering. She turns back to the Lord Commander and her mother’s hand, their expressions haunted but resigned.
“I choose Ser Violet Hound.”
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Incense flits through her chambers in wisps of curled smoke, the smell of jasmine and leather seeping into her lungs. She leans against the door, the wood digging into her back as she breathes deeply with closed lids. She didn’t utter a word when she marched back to her chambers, barely acknowledging the lords and ladies of her mother’s court on the way there.
Vi had stayed close behind, her presence ever the anchor and a shadow. But also an undoing. A constant unraveling of what she’s been told it is to be… herself. The role she is to play. And when they reached her doors, Vi pushed them open with ease, albeit her face remained stoney and neutral. Something in her shoulders exuded resistance, confirmed when a strong hand wrapped around her bicep when Caitlyn stepped forward. They stare at one another with pinched brows and unsaid words thicker than smoke.
“I need some rest,” Caitlyn said after a few restless moments, the silence before filled with the same heavy air that seems to follow the pair at all times lately. “Goodnight, Ser Vi.”
“Of course. Sleep well, Princess,” Vi breathed, stepping back, the only tell of emotion residing in her eyes. As it always has. Silver irises always quick to betray her. They’ve betrayed her in the nights she sat on one of Caitlyn's many cushions in her chambers to listen to her lament on the vices of her duties, amor distractingly discarded in favor of a loose tunic, as she regarded her with so much intention.
They betrayed her the first time she brought her to see her dragon, fear and apprehension lining her brow. But her eyes, open and gray and so undeniably soft, were so trusting she almost abandoned all sense of propriety then and there. But dragon smoke huffed over them before Caitlyn could force their lips together.
And again they exposed her when she rushed out of the Gold Keep to take to the skies after a fight with her mother, the very one that saw her sent to Keystone to seek a suitor. She had been ready to breathe lungfuls of crisp, thin air and did so for hours. She wasn’t expecting to be met with a silver oasis, her knight standing there waiting for her when she returned under the moonlight. Worry had been so apparent even as Caitlyn landed in the dragon pit. The dragon handlers had been furious with her knight, yelling and cursing at her in their ancient language, but Vi ignored them. She only looked at Caitlyn, rushing to her the moment her feet met the hard earth.
Fingers had gripped her chin, her face revealing the amount of distress even without a word uttered between them. Caitlyn supposes it had been then she could no longer deny what had been pulling at her heart. The moment she acknowledged that their endless flirting had been more than the teasing smirks and wicked banter. She thought the line may have been crossed that night, the sound of dragon wings gusting moonlit wind in their wake, with the way Vi held her. As though Caitlyn hadn’t been privy to brash exits before. Like she was precious beyond her title. She thought surely the knight would kiss her.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I needed to see you safe,” she finally whispered, warmth bloomed along the seams of Caitlyn’s riding leathers from Vi’s hand on her waist, her fingers, devoid of their gloves for some reason, still held her chin, her thumb daring to stroke in small circles.
But she took a step back with a shuddering breath, reality seeming to have washed over her in an icy wave. The next six months had been nothing short of torture.
Their touches had only grown more daring after that. Their gazes wandering and open. And wherever Caitlyn dared to venture, Vi always followed.
“As for your match, seek them out yourself. As I did.”
Caitlyn has barely readied for bed by the time she finds herself at her door again. Flames crackle from their torches mounted on the wall and the incense has long gone out. But the burning sensation lingers over her body, pooling deep in her belly.
She pushes a door open, orange hues and white moonlight greet her before the shock of red and white armor. But she senses her before the door is even open.
“Cait?’ she whispers, her upper body already turning to face the princess, armor clinking with the movement. Caitlyn licks her lips before stepping back wordlessly, leaving the door open for Vi to follow. She does without a word, her boots heavy against the stone floor.
“Close the door,” Caitlyn demands softly, barely hearing her own voice over the pounding of her heart in her ears. Vi sucks in a breath, but follows the order, the door clicking and creaking as it shuts, encasing them both in so much warmth Caitlyn is sure her skin is aflame. She wishes she could blame wine for what she does next, but the distance between them is far more sinful than her desires.
Vi doesn’t move yet her eyes plead what her voice doesn’t. When Caitlyn reaches her, hands outstretched, Vi doesn’t stop her, simply watching as Caitlyn’s long fingers snake under and through the clasps and buckles of her armor. Caitlyn’s breathing quickens and her face flushes with each deliberate click of another strap undone.
The chestplate is frigid against her thin nightdress, but even with the heavy armor, she can feel Vi’s heavy breath, the armor rising and falling in short bursts against Caitlyn’s breasts. Her knight’s eyes are glazed over, pupils widening with every piece of metal dislodged and carefully removed. They rake over her and Caitlyn feels herself preening under the attention and she hasn’t even been touched yet.
“Princess…?” Vi breathes, her hands finally moving. Not to stop her, but she stalls Caitlyn’s movements, calloused thumbs rubbing the skin of her wrists, her breath fanning over her face. Her eyelashes flutter as she glances to Caitlyn’s mouth, her own lips parting. Caitlyn has to stop herself from leaning in, from capturing her plump bottom lip between her teeth. Instead she looks up, her own hands now splayed against the soft skin of her neck, warm ink and a rapid pulse under her fingers.
“Violet.”
Her knight shudders, squeezing her eyes shut and her body leans forward so her forehead grazes Caitlyn’s.
“I… What’re you–?” Vi tries, swallowing and Caitlyn feels a twinge of pity. She chuckles, raising a hand from under the armor to cradle her jaw.
“I’m making my choice,” she murmurs, her voice feeling like a purr in her own chest. Vi’s eyes shoot open, frantic in their searching of Caitlyn’s own. But Caitlyn continues to unlatch layer after layer with deliberation, letting her red cloak fall with a muffled thump behind them. And with it, Vi’s resolve joins it as their lips collide in a kiss that sends Caitlyn reeling.
It’s everything she’s ever fantasized and yet nothing like she expects. Vi kisses with the same fierceness with which she wields a blade. Precise and strong, her lips crashing down over and over again. But where she fights with a quiet ruthlessness, she moans loudly into Caitlyn’s mouth now, her hands coming to cradle both sides of her face as her tongue demands entry and Caitlyn struggles to keep pace at the sudden change in tempo. But when she does catch up, she fights with equal fervor, taking care to suck Vi’s lower lip in her mouth, sucking until she feels it swell between her teeth.
If the sun had a taste, it would be Vi’s lips, her tongue liquid fire down her throat as her taste floods her mouth. And she realizes she’s never needed as much as she does in this moment. More than the inferno building deep in her core, her entire chest burns and aches for the woman kissing her, possession and reverence in every swipe of her tongue against Caitlyn’s lips.
Wetness pools so dangerously hot between her thighs at every sound that leaves the knight’s throat. It’s nothing like Caitlyn could ever have pictured. Whimpers when their tongues dance, spit linking them when their lungs force them to part for air, gasps at the sharp tug in her wild hair.
“Get this shit off of me,” Vi growls into Caitlyn’s neck, sucking the skin gently between her teeth. Her hands having moved to palm at any part of Caitlyn she can reach, eliciting gasps of her own. Thumbs dig into her hip bones, the pressure bordering on sharp but she needs more. So much more.
“I was trying,” Caitlyn chuckles through a moan when teeth nip her earlobe.
Vi’s armor is still handled with care, both of them sliding it off with joined fingers, the chest plate lying like delicate glass on one of the cushions. Only for their lips to join again, the collision a gnashing of teeth and barer bodies, her warmth finally less obscured for Caitlyn to cling to through Vi’s loose undershirt.
It’s too much and not enough. The feeling of Vi against her like this, so solid and warm and present. She hears herself moan before she registers the sound vibrating in her throat when Vi’s hand fists her hair, pulling at the nape to tilt Caitlyn’s chin upward, the kisses growing sloppier and wetter with every pass.
“Oh!” Caitlyn yelps when Vi’s hands grip her thighs, the skin burning from the raw contact as she lifts Caitlyn up, her legs wrapping around her knight’s strong waist and her arms clinging to her shoulders, digging and marking. Crescent stars among vines and bones that ink her entire back. She wants to taste every line.
She’s carried to the side of the room where her bed sits, the wood of the frame tall and supporting the canopy overhead.
“Do you have any idea…” Vi pants as she sets Caitlyn on the bed, the comforter plush and sinking. She throws the feather pillows out of the way, cursing whoever thought decorative cushions were necessary. Vi kisses her again and again. Her lip, her jaw, her neck, finally daring to trail wetness down to her collarbone before black and silver fill Caitlyn’s vision. “...how long I’ve wanted you?” she finishes, her hands bunching the material of her nightdress, pushing it up milky thighs, the backs of her knuckles dragging over the expanse of her stomach, slowing deliberately over perky brown nipples.
“No longer than I’ve wanted you,” Caitlyn husks, helping her to remove the needless garment. Her veins are hot under skin as Vi’s eyes don’t hide her appreciation, raking over her body with a tenderness that brings a stinging prick behind her eyes.
Hands follow the path of her eyes, starting at her knees as they spread open, Vi slotting between them, heat on heat singing her very blood. They skate up toned legs, squeezing her hips before grazing her ribs.
“Look at you,” Vi breathes out, the words seeming to be more to herself than to Caitlyn. But she writhes under the attention, her back arching when her hands move up, the skin of her palm rough against her breast before it slides up to gently hold her throat, thumb brushing as Caitlyn gulps at the sharp pang of arousal. Vi grinds her hips down, wetness smearing on her infuriatingly clothed upper half. “All for me?” Vi hisses at the dampness, her hand squeezing just tight enough to make Caitlyn keen.
Her hips move then, jutting off the made bed, seeking some sort of friction, some sort of release to the pressure building and yet she hasn’t even been touched. Not where she needs. Where she fucking aches. But with the way Vi’s hand feels on her throat, her hips gyrating along Caitlyn’s core, she wonders how Vi knew this would spark every nerve in her body.
As if the knight could read her thoughts, her voice pours over her, hot honey melting on her skin. “Did you think I forgot, Princess?” Vi asks as she leans over Caitlyn, her clothed chest brushing against sensitive nipples. Words evade her as Vi’s other hand caresses the swell of her hip, sliding down to lift her thigh to sit at Vi’s waist, closing her in. Caitlyn tilts her head back while Vi’s lips ghost over her chin, teeth grazing her jaw. “Did you think I would ever forget the sound you made when I pinned you, pretty girl?”
Caitlyn starts at the memory. She trains with Vi weekly, swordplay and hand to hand, all things to better protect herself. But one particular session saw Caitlyn sprawled on her back, Vi underneath her with her elbow around Caitlyn’s throat. The pressure forced an involuntary moan from her lips, causing the knight to freeze under her, but she didn’t move her elbow as her bicep cloaked her throat in a way that dizzied Caitlyn and saw her avoiding the knight’s gaze for a fortnight.
Vi squeezes gently now, capturing her lips in a deep kiss, her tongue invading Caitlyn’s mouth with a gentle dominance, the possibility of Vi’s surrender still an option if Caitlyn were to take it. But she doesn’t want to. Not yet. Not when Vi’s fingers are hinting at what’s to come but avoiding the wetness staining her shirt, to Caitlyn’s frustration.
“I believe you’re still over dressed,” Caitlyn manages through heaving breaths, a hiccupped moan stuttering in her lungs when the pads of Vi’s thumbs graze her nipples, having moved from where it found residence at the junction of her thighs. And it’s true, the knight still adorns her trousers and boots, the tunic now damp with sweat sticking to ropes and cords of muscles along her abdomen.
A wicked grin stretches across her face and Caitlyn feels a flood of wetness slick between her legs as she squeezes them closed after Vi steps off the bed. Sitting up to rest on her elbows, she watches as the tunic falls to the floor, and suddenly, the princess is on her feet, hands seeking and eager, impatience a vice that only seems present when it comes to the woman before her.
“Like what you see, Princess?” she laughs but is cut off when Caitlyn lunges forward, her hands splayed across her muscled stomach and closes her mouth around a perky pink nipple, her tongue swirling and taking the bud between her teeth. “Oh fuck! Cait- shit- I- ha!” Vi’s hands tangle in Caitlyn’s hair, her pants still clinging to her hips. A shiver runs down her spine as the affections slip past Vi’s lips, landing on Caitlyn’s skin and into the ever growing tight ball of heat at her core.
Their movements are frantic. Bites and licks leave red, wet trails across collar bones and breasts, hands grip and palm supple flesh like it's the only time they’ll be able to do this.
“Seven hells,’ Vi curses when her trousers get stuck on her ankles, her boots not having been removed yet in her haste to bare herself. The sight brings a laugh out of Caitlyn’s chest, the sound stopping Vi in her tracks as she tears at the endless strings and lace with clumsy fingers.
“Would you like help, my love?” she asks, and if it were possible, she thinks Vi’s eyes would’ve darkened further as the endearment slips into the air between them. Vi looks up at her from where she crouches.
“Only if you call me that again.”
Caitlyn hums, swaying her hips, well aware of her own desire on display, damp indigo curls slickening her thighs with every step, before crouching, her fingers somehow steadier than she feels when she helps Vi remove her boots, her pants finally following the heap on the floor. The sound of rustling clothes accompanies the suddenly shy smiles on both of their faces, their bodies now bare under the hue of the torchlights scattered along her walls.
The knight is nothing short of mesmerizing. Handsome in the way ropes of muscle ripple with each calculated move, lines of ink trellis tanned skin, the divet in her brow challenging and cocky. But pretty in the almond shape of her eyes, long lashes fluttering against the pad of Caitlyn’s fingers, lips swollen and pink. The orange hues reflecting from her firelit walls paint her now, the canvas of her body littered with scars Caitlyn wants to kiss, her body something so clearly something to be worshiped. A thatch of thick pink curls is already so damp and Caitlyn revels in that she isn’t the only one so clearly affected.
They stand before one another, bare and open for the other, and Caitlyn isn’t surprised when not an ounce of shame works its way through her ribs. Not when Vi is looking at her like she’s hung the very moon. Their chests brush as Caitlyn closes the distance again, Vi already taking a step to meet her, their lips connecting in a slow rhythm that is no less void of heat. But they take more time in their exploration.
Caitlyn’s hands take her in, running along her chest, squeezing a breast in her hand, the flesh fitting there like it’s made for Caitlyn and Caitlyn alone. She walks them backward until her bed greets the back of her knees.
They collide the way snow lands on the ground. Soft and inevitable. The bed begging to swallow them as they tangle themselves, the sounds of their bodies and lips its own harmony.
The agreement is wordless, their bodies refusing to separate in their desperation to touch. To feel. To consume and give so they can’t tell where one starts and the other ends. Vi’s hips move above her, grinding down so wetness smears on the sweat-licked skin of her navel, a string of curses linking them together before Caitlyn swallows the words, yanking them from Vi’s throat with her tongue.
“How do you want me?” Vi says against her mouth, her large hands gripping her hips, just barely lifting them from the bed to give her more pressure, moving Caitlyn’s body for her while her knees sink further into the mattress. Giving and taking all at once. It burns so wonderfully, words evade her in place of stuttering moans, growing louder as Vi grinds harder, her teeth biting down on the spot just behind her ear when Caitlyn still doesn’t reply.
“Shit,” Caitlyn hisses, her back arching and her breasts pushing into Vi’s, earning a soft grunt as her tongue soothes the bite.
“I like it when you curse. But that isn’t what I asked you, Princess,” she purrs, her thumbs digging in, still not touching her, just daring to prick the junction of her thighs with short nails. She wants permission, Caitlyn realizes.
“Touch me,” Caitlyn gasps, chasing Vi’s lips. But Vi dodges, kissing right under her eye instead.
“I am touching you.” She emphasises the point by squeezing her hips to a point that borders on pain, pushing her core even firmer into Vi’s navel. As if she could join their bodies by force alone.
Caitlyn swallows a frustrated groan, her breath hitching with every slow pass of Vi’s abdominals against wet lips, the muscled ridges almost enough. But not quite.
“Vi, please,” she tries, bashfulness creeping up her spine, flushing her already reddened cheeks. She watches something pass over Vi’s face. Soft and subtle but Caitlyn knows her knight like the back of her hand. “Just–” she reaches for Vi’s wrist, pulling and pushing all at once, her pussy throbbing and clenching around nothing, the muscles seeking and hot.
Vi chuckles, warm and throaty as she lets Caitlyn tangle their fingers before diving into the liquid fire simmering between them. Vi’s eyes roll to the back of her head at the feeling, her upper body nearly crushing them both as her forehead rests on Caitlyn’s, her mouth agape as though Caitlyn were the one touching her. Vi’s knuckles slip between swollen lips with how much wetness has collected, the evidence still shining on her own stomach.
“Yes…” Caitlyn sighs, her head tilting back. Finally.
Vi gathers wetness on her fingers, stroking and explorative. She slips in like she’s sunk into clear water, nothing stopping each ridged and scarred knuckle from sinking deeper, the princess’s walls fluttering and gripping, so glad to be filled.
“Oh my gods, Cait,” Vi moans, her mouth still open, and Caitlyn doesn’t hesitate to take advantage, her hip moving against Vi’s fingers, a mewling sound reverberating between them. Whether it’s hers or Vi’s, she can’t tell. She doesn’t care. Not when she slowly pumps her fingers, her hips moving still, rocking against her own wrist with shallow thrusts.
She adds a second finger with ease, the tips curling just so, the spot deep and forgiving as her thrusts grow longer, harder, Caitlyn’s hips desperate to meet her in the middle. The sounds are addictive. Music made just for her. Their bodies the instruments and the conductors, Vi plucking the strings of her nerves, her teeth gently tugging a nipple into her mouth.
“When I imagined this,” Vi husks, her fingers curling. “I always thought it would be my head between your thighs. I imagined the ways you would taste, the way your nails would tear at my scalp. But this–” Each sentiment, each image is punctuated with a roll of her hips, fingers thrusting into wanton, wet heat.
“Oh gods…” Caitlyn squirms, her fingers digging into Vi’s shoulders, her lips seeking any ounce of skin she can reach.
“Feeling you around my fingers is something I’ll die for, Princess.” She sucks Caitlyn’s tongue in her mouth, a damn near keening sob ripping out of her throat as her orgasm threatens to break her.
She reaches her own hand down, squeezing through the minimal space between their bodies, threading through curls until she reaches the apex, reveling in the surprised whimper Vi grants her.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Cait– mmph!” Vi twitches burying her face in Caitlyn’s neck as her rhythm stutters when Caitlyn’s fingers pinch her clit, her own need to give making her vision hazy. But she finds it again, settling as she takes what Caitlyn gives her, arm nearly buckling where it holds her next to Caitlyn’s head.
Strong fingers grip her jaw suddenly, their movements quicker and more frantic, Vi’s thrusts increasing in tempo. Her eyes are open wide, and Caitlyn finds herself unable to look away, a hand still lovingly swirling around her swollen clit, the other holding the back of Vi’s damp head.
Her moans turn to high pitched whines when Vi’s thumb pushes into her clit, the sound of their hips meeting over and over again bringing her so close, so painfully close to the edge.
“That’s it,” Vi encourages, her breath catching at Caitlyn’s ministrations just below, her own determination to bring Vi with her the only thing keeping her from the peak of it all. “Come for me, Princess. I can feel you– hah– you’re right there aren’t you, pretty girl?”
Caitlyn can only nod, her finger moving faster along Vi’s heat, gathering wetness at her entrance before swirling, flicking her finger at a tempo makes Vi’s thighs twitch around Caitlyn’s hips.
“Gods what’re you doing to me?” Vi whines, her nose pushing into Caitlyn’s cheeks, leaving open mouthed kisses in her wake.
“Making you mine just as I’m yours,” she finally husks, knowing she won’t have a choice, her pussy fluttering so violently, squeezing Vi’s fingers so tightly she curses.
“I’ve been yours long before this, Princess,” she whispers, the words carrying such a sweetness, nothing she would expect to hear from the bold warrior atop her. But it’s enough to be her undoing, a shout ripping from her throat as her muscles pull taut, a bowstring ready to fire. Pleasure blinds her senses, white heat breaking open in her belly to spread like a wild fire in her veins. Air barely reaches her lungs as it wracks her body, Vi’s body slowing enough to watch her, their eyes not leaving the other.
And all the while, Vi kisses every inch of her face, words of encouragement spilling from her lips like ink on parchment. “So good, so pretty,” she whispers, kissing her cheeks, her eyelids. Her nose. Her jaw.
Her fingers pump lazily now, drawing out every tendril of her pleasure until overstimulation throbs down to her toes. She hadn’t realized her eyes were closed until they opened, Vi still languidly stroking her insides, a lip trapped under a canine to stop a wide grin from spreading on her face.
“There’s my pretty girl,” she says when Caitlyn’s vision focuses, her breathing finally evening out. And yet, all she can think is how gorgeous the knight is, shaggy bangs hanging to shroud them, eyes still dark and open.
“Did you…?” Caitlyn asks, her fingers still stuck between them. Vi’s hips twitch when she moves, but she smiles shyly and shakes her head before planting a soft kiss on her lips.
“That doesn’t matter. Not right now,” she says, kissing her again, only breaking away to remove her fingers, earning a pitiful whine from the princess at the sudden emptiness at her core. But no other noise is able to escape when Vi brings her fingers into her mouth, making a show to suck on the digits, moaning like she’s tasted her favorite dessert.
“I knew you’d taste sweet, Princess.”
Caitlyn pulls her in for a loud, messy kiss, groaning at tasting herself on the knight’s tongue, and using the element of surprise, she flips them over, straddling the knight’s waist.
They continue like that, stoking flames in one another as if time were of the essence, the unspeakable fear of the sun’s rising ending whatever’s transpired here tonight. So they don’t stop, not until sunlight bathes the room, shadows casting through the latticework of Caitlyn’s windows.
_________________
The sun robs them of nothing.
Well, perhaps her sanity, replacing it with insatiability. There isn’t a moment where her thoughts don’t inevitably drift to her knight. Small council meetings drag, endless bickering a numbing, dragging noise to her ears, her mother’s quips and disappointed demeanor enough to turn her stomach.
But when she looks up, Ser Violet already meets her gaze, a small smirk stretching her lips when Lord Hosekl, the master of coin, guffaws at something Caitlyn doesn’t even pay attention to, her focus on how uncomfortable her core feels at the mere sight of her.
It’s a dance of time and space when they take each other. Moments of sudden whims and an abandonment of her duties when armor clinks to the ground and her gowns are ripped more often than not. It's enough for her handmaiden Talia to notice while holding a gown up before Caitlyn can step into it, the rip traveling from the top of the shoulder down to the waist. A deep blush crawls up her cheeks at the maid’s quizzical brow.
“Must have been during my trip into the city,” Caitlyn says dismissively, the memory of Vi’s hands shredding the dress, nails digging into her back as they made love in the Sept, the distant smells of candles burning so strong and overwhelming. The church of Piltover not something she believed in, truthfully. But she found herself at the altar, the only name on her lips being the woman cloaking her in the dark corner of the Sept of Janna, her dress bunched and wrinkled in Caitlyn’s nimble hands.
Vi, Vi, Vi–
“You like it in public don’t you, pretty girl?” Vi had husked in her ear, three fingers deep while pressing Caitlyn’s back into one of the ancient stone pillars, the wide crest of it enough to hide them from the pious and the sinners alike. “Under the eyes of the gods too,” she chucked, thrusting so deep she saw stars and all the gods at once.
“Fuck you,” she quipped with no bite, her chest heaving through the restricted dress, her breasts so sensitive as her nipples rub along the fabric. Vi’s right, of course. Something sharp and poignant melts in her gut, a numbing under the crescents of her cheeks when they did this. It’s one thing to pull Vi in by the cloak into her bedchambers. It’s another when she finds a corner in the throne room or the garden of the Godswood. Or the Sept. She thinks she’s perhaps driven by the thrill of doing something she wasn’t supposed to. But deep down, she knows this is exactly what she’s supposed to do.
She’s insatiable because she doesn’t know when it will end.
“Perhaps when we return, Princess. Can’t you see I’m here to pray?” she purred in her ear, thrusting up and swirling her clit with her thumb, earning a short whimper, loud enough to make Vi’s eye widen before shoving her fingers in Caitlyn’s mouth.
“You need to be quiet or we’ll both be skinned,” she chastised, but her tone held nothing but a thrilled delight. She didn’t remove her fingers, and Caitlyn came once with Vi’s quiet demand in her ear, “suck, pretty girl.”
She shattered like a sea of stars on Vi’s hand and was peppered with soft kisses after. But they didn’t move from behind the pillar. Their breaths intermingled as Vi’s eyes glinted with hungry desire, insatiable as the Princess’s while her arousal slid down her legs.
“I need to clean that up in such a sacred place,” Vi mused, almost more to herself, her eyes casting over Caitlyn’s shoulder, the sounds of Septas and pleas to the dead echo in the vast hall. Caitlyn watched with a bated breath as Vi lifted her other hand, her leather glove still clinging to the tendons. She uses her teeth to pull it off before gently prying Caitlyn’s mouth open.
“I don’t think I can trust you to keep quiet so I need you to suck on this while I taste you,” she whispered along Caitlyn’s jaw. Already proving her point, a whimper tried to pry through the leather, her tongue savored the taste of it, the hints of Vi lingering along the seams. “Can you be good? Will you be quiet?”
Caitlyn nodded, her breathing picking up, lungs craving air. Vi gave her a godsdamned wink before sinking to her knees, pulling her gown down with her, shielding her as the knight disappeared from view.
But Gods did Caitlyn feel her, her tongue licking up her legs, catching the drips of come that still soaks her. She bit down hard on the leather glove when lips sucked around her clit, her tongue flattened from entrance and back up, doing exactly as she said. Cleaning up.
She comes quicker than ever before.
The carriage ride back to the Keep had been a blissful high until she was met with her mother’s glare the moment she entered the palace.
“Of course, Princess,” Talia says meekly, albeit knowingly now.
She knows other members of her mother’s court notice. She can feel their eyes and whispers when she walks through the corridors and yet she can’t bring herself to care much. Not when she’s so undeniably happy.
It’s more than just a union of bodies. They both know it. There’s no room for denial. Not with the way Vi holds her after, sweet nothings and soft lullabies pulling her into sleep. Nor the way she accompanies her on her royal hunts, watching her with a reverent pride that swells Caitlyn’s chest with such an ache when she can’t kiss the dopey look from her knight’s face.
She feels courted more now than she ever has with the suitors her Queen mother has forced before her. And she also feels as though she’s the one courting if Vi’s brilliant blushing is anything to go by.
They’re in the dragon pit when the words are finally uttered. She’d convinced Vi into the saddle, coaxing her with praise that went straight to both of their cores. The princess ignored the whispers on the walk over, the ladies of court all ogling the knight at her back. Vi was void of armor, riding leathers clinging to hard muscles instead. Deep crimson and the Kiramman crest still marking her as Caitlyn’s.
She took Vi’s shaking hand in her own, placing it on golden scales as Nyra rumbled in delight. But Vi interprets the sound as threatening, her hand moving to retreat before Caitlyn stands at her back, pushing her hand back into the hard scales.
“She’s happy to see you,” Caitlyn coos.
“I guess I would be burned otherwise,” Vi tries to laugh, nerves lacing her voice. Caitlyn merely hums and moves to help the knight of the realm climb onto the dragon.
Vi clings to her like a vice, a shrill yelp muffled by the wind as they glide and Caitlyn feels her heart melt with so much affection when the knight fills the air with laughter.
When they land, their bodies melded together like a forged weapon, heat and liquid flame, the words slip out into indigo locks. The I love you so quiet she isn’t sure she’s heard it until Vi’s voice raises slightly, her chin resting on her shoulder.
“Thank you.”
“For what, my love?” Caitlyn asks breathlessly, her chest still threatening to burst as her heart riots in her chest.
“For that. I haven’t felt so free but when I’m with you,” she admits softly. And Caitlyn knows the time is coming that she can’t contain what her heart has known since she laid eyes on the rogue knight.
If she is to marry, it could only be to her.
_________________
The hiding is exhausting. It pulls and weighs like stones on her back. The ways she wishes she could court Violet and vice versa are an all consuming thought. The struggle toys at her nerves to not show her affection so openly in the training yard or in the corridors.
She stifles the urge to have Vi seated at her side as she dines, all of which she voices to the knight. Just as she’s confided in her for so many things, she doesn't hide her wishes to be allowed to abandon the burden of her inheritance. To be open in her affections. And Vi listens, her hands warm against Caitlyn’s skin, her lips soft on the blades of her shoulders.
She doesn’t say much but Caitlyn appreciates her attentiveness. So when clothes she’s never seen before are laid on her bed after a tense supper with her mother and their envoys from the north, she starts.
She picks them up, their stench alarming and the stitching haphazard. Vi’s script is scrawled on a loose piece of parchment on her pillow, the directions bringing a splitting grin to her face.
The smell fades the longer she wears the garments, the quality clearly that of a peasant. But the pants are loose and comfortable, the tunic flowing and large enough to hide her chest. Her hair is plaited, only loose strands escaping to tickle her cheeks as she pulls the worn boots on, and she vaguely wonders if they’re Vi’s.
She evades the castle with ease, finding an unexpected sight just outside the walls. Violet leans against the brick and stone, her clothes of a similar state, a sly smirk painting her lips. The sight sends a ripple down her spine, the knight’s chest exposed with loose thread as moonlight casts wicked shadows on her face.
“Your hair,” Caitlyn states as she closes the distance. Vi perks up and her eyes speak of a challenge. Daring the princess to comment. She doesn’t disappoint. “You look..” she ponders, pinching a lock between her fingers. “Like an angry oil slick,” she decides.
“Don’t sugar coat it, Princess,” Vi huffs, affection glinting off every feature.
“Where’re we going?”
Vi’s smile widens as she holds out her hand. “Do you trust me?”
Caitlyn purses her lips, hesitating to place her hand in the knight’s gloved one. Vi raises a scarred brow and Caitlyn caves, no longer able to feign the truth.
She’s never seen the lower half of the city before. The smallfolk linger in drunken stupors, their laughter abundant as their wild spirits are free to wander. It’s dirty and ale stains the pavement.
But there’s music and dancing, plays in raunchy debacles that see both of them laughing with the rest of them. No one recognizes them. No one recognizes her .
“You know your way around here very well,” Caitlyn comments as they turn a corner, and Caitlyn knows where they are simply by reputation alone. The Silk Street sees coins lodged between bricks, nude men and women alike flaunting and floundering in sheer linens. Some wiggle their fingers at both of them, whistling and calling out. But Vi pulls her closer before they stop, oak doors already opened, exposing beaded curtains and swirls of heady incense. She drops coins in a short woman’s hands, her wrinkles evident of the life she’s lived. Her feathered robe and dark makeup hold an authority the other men and women here don’t possess. Caitlyn averts her gaze as they pass through a wall of heady smoke, the threshold into another world entirely already leaving a desired taste on her tongue.
“I grew up down here,” Vi murmurs, pulling her deeper inside.
“Here? But I thought–”
Vi chuckles, pulling her in for a deep kiss. Caitlyn pulls back startled, her eyes darting around for wandering eyes, birds that will surely fly back to chirp in her mother’s ear. Vi licks her lips before pulling her back, lips not quite touching before whispering, “I told you I’ve been yours long before now. You’re free to do as you please here.”
She doesn’t kiss Caitlyn fully this time, merely nipping her bottom lip before pulling away. And Caitlyn feels as though she’s on fire. Caitlyn keeps her gasp at bay as they venture deeper, her eyes catching on the myriad of bodies strewn across the pleasure house. The sounds and smells, wanton and earthy, invade her senses, lulling her into a dizzying haze.
Curiosity has been her constant companion, its presence shapely and loud as patrons around them before Vi leads them to a secluded corner, her hands dominating and possessive in a way that sets her skin aflame. A curtain of beads and torches hides them from view of others, but it doesn’t deafen the noises, the pleasure seeping out of the very walls.
“You can be as loud as you want here,” Vi says between searing kisses, hands already skirting underneath the ragged clothing. “And I want to hear every sound.”
“Only if I can hear yours,” Caitlyn challenges, mirroring Vi’s suction on her lip, pulling into her mouth with a heady groan, fingers digging and clawing skin she knows like her own. Vi hums into her mouth, and their hands are nothing short of greedy.
Caitlyn thinks their collective sound must drown out the others when her hands are pushed into the wall, her chest rubbing against the floral wallpaper as Vi crouches down behind her, taking her trousers with her.
She lets out a guttural sound, something she normally would have to keep in her throat anywhere else when Vi pushes her legs apart and feasts upon her like it's her last meal, mewling and humming with every swipe of her tongue, hands gripping her ass to spread her further apart.
She makes Vi come shortly after savoring the way she clenches around her longer fingers, her head tipped back as they lie on the cushions strewn about the floor. And when they return, their hushed giggles fill her chambers as they bathe next to the fireplace. Black swirls of inky black litter the tub when she washes the knight’s hair, but they don’t leave the warm water just yet. Instead, they hold each other, content to exist just as they are.
The weeks progress as spring drips away, summer heat lining the brows of the Queendom and filling the distant fields with crops of grain. A distant war still looms, heedless battles near the canal of Mudtown emptying the Crown’s stores with a slow drip, like ice melting into the earth.
It’s enough to bring out an aggression in her mother, the endless quarrel of her lack of marriage despite the lake of parchment at their doorstep and scorned lords of houses she’s already blatantly refused. Their fights grow more relentless and their words grow sharper than blades. And the threat of her imminent future weighs on both of them.
And with it, she watches her knight withdraw. It’s a slow thing. A plague that starts to spread, black and malevolent in its ending.
Vi holds her one morning, something heavy staining the air. The sun has only just begun to encroach on the moon, the gentle light doing nothing to quell the way her intuition churns in her gut.
“I’ll be joining the forces in the canal,” she admits. Their skin still glows from their love making, Vi having taken every inch of her, as though she were committing her to memory.
“What?” Caitlyn asks, bewildered. It had been days since she’d been able to slip Vi into her bed, the knight noticeably aloof and absent. Caitlyn chalked it up to exhaustion, ignoring the dread that sinks like a stone in her chest cavity.
“I leave at daybreak,” Vi croaks. Caitlyn doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe.
“You’ll have to pick one eventually,” Vi whispers, running her fingers along the sharp edges of her cheek. Indignation runs hot in her blood and she fights the urge to bristle. “And I can’t be here when you do.”
Caitlyn takes a moment to breathe, brow pinching in the middle as rejection cools her skin, ice running through her veins. How can she really think–?
“Why? Are you– are you telling me to pick one?” she asks, her voice catching in her throat. But she huffs, shaking her head in disbelief. “You know what my choice is. What my choice has always been.”
Vi smiles at her, the gesture a mask she’s familiar with. “You heard your mother at the small council. You have duties and a place and– I can’t give what some lord can. All I could offer is to what? Run off to the free cities? Ask you to denounce your birthright to sell oranges at a market?” Vi asks, her voice cracking and hardening with each word, like it’s been rehearsed in her mind for a while. Caitlyn doesn’t answer, the very idea she’s proposed lifts something from her heart, but she knows her place cannot be so quickly abandoned. “And I… I can’t watch someone else give you what I want to.”
And Caitlyn feels her heart shatter in her chest, the shards stabbing and piercing. She sits up, the ruffled green sheets pooling at her waist. Vi still lies behind her, still and unmoving. Her breathing heavy and labored and Caitlyn feels a lump form in her throat.
“When I’m Queen I will make a new order.”
The decision sits clear as water in front of her now. Sucking in a ragged breath, she turns, surprised to see mist collecting in thick lashes, the knight’s chin quivering.
“I can’t stop you from leaving but know that when you return– and you will return or I will have you executed– that I will have made my choice then. And it’s the same choice I’ve made over and over again.” Stubborn will threads through her voice, and she needs Vi to hear her now.
“Princess I–”
Caitlyn doesn’t let her finish, silencing her slotted lips and a strong grip on her jaw.
Vi stares up at her, eyes wide and lips parted before Caitlyn brushes their mouths together again, not quite a kiss but needing the closeness all the same. “When you return, there will be no need for suitors and I will still do my duty as heir. But I will need no man to do it. You may not believe me, but I know what I’m capable of. You will watch nothing but your ascension as my queen consort and that’s the end of it.” The words are of a biting fierceness and she doesn’t know if Vi believes her. But she has a plan, calculated and cunning.
Vi chuckles at that, pushing ink colored hair out of Caitlyn’s face, tucking the strands behind her ear. But Caitlyn doesn’t smile. She doesn’t laugh. Her eyes remain a source of determined fire that Vi can’t hide from.
“You’re serious.”
Caitlyn hums, an idea striking her like lightning. She stands abruptly, her chest preening at Vi’s discontented noise. But she goes to her vanity, applying a rouge blush to her lips, feeling the quizzical silver gaze watching her every move. Grabbing one of her many kerchiefs, she brings the cloth to her lips, staining it in the shape of her lips before bringing it back to the knight, still strewn amongst the sea of sheets and pillows.
The gift falls in the knight’s awaiting palm, and Caitlyn doesn’t have to verbalize what the symbol means. Vi brings it to her own lips, kissing the same place as the princess, her eyes closing with a content sigh.
They lie for the remainder of the moon’s dance in the sky, kissing and talking of everything and nothing, Caitlyn threatening to come to battle on dragon back if need be. Their touches tender and soft, explorative as though for the first time until sleep had her way, tucking them both in her arms. And when the sun finally rises, inevitable in its ascension, Caitlyn helps Vi dress, clasping the red cloak of the Queen to her shoulders, the kerchief tucked carefully into her breastplate. The red-lipped stain a promise, an oath sealed in the very fires lurking in her blood.
And Ser Violet Hound has never broken an oath.
Notes:
Thank you all so much for reading! As always, I adore and love your feedback so feel free to tell me your thoughts below. Bass, I hope you enjoyed too! :)
Now, off to my Heavy is the Crown land hehehehehe.
Chapter 2
Notes:
Hi everyone! I bet y'all thought you'd seen the last of me with this au! But alas, someone made some of the most adorable art of them flying on Nyra and I finally caved and cranked out 15k words for ya!
CW: Uselessness ahead, a death (not Caitlyn or Vi and I don't describe much but just thought yall should know) and uhh yeah that's all I can think of :)
Enjoy!
PS No I did not edit this much bc I'm lazy and just wanted to get this out here bc I've been slaving over this for several days now so if you see a typo no tf you didn't
OH one more thing: I do not want to hear any GoT or HOTD lore purists in my comments. I don't care. I took what I wanted and I stretched and played with it and fit it to what I wanted for this little au so I don't need or want anyone getting their panties/boxers in a twist over lore. I don't need anyone to correct me on it or explain it to me (trust me I'm aware of the lore/ have read the books/ done my due diligence and all that shit and I literally do not care). So yeah, with that, enjoy :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Stepstones are more blood than ocean.
The white-tipped waves that bleed into the battle ground reek of crimson salt, staining the sand at low tide when all that’s left are bodies skewered on shell-covered stakes. It’s hard to tell how many wear a Kiramman crest or the ripped scraps of Crabfeeder to the east. It doesn’t matter much when their blood runs cold all the same. The sight is enough to make even the sturdiest stomach turn.
The battles shifted here weeks ago. The canal at Mudtown was secured with a swift blow to the leaderless pirates from Bilgewater, the Kirammans simply possessing more men. But they’d left their flank open, the barren beaches just north soon overrun with the men not brought to Mudtown.
Only for a rogue house at the bank of the Weeping Water to throw a coup of the Warden of the North some weeks later, splitting the forces in half when the call for aid finally reached the Queen’s door. The entire north was just as blood splattered as the beaches Vi’d been sent to. Lord Silco’s House Bolton is one she thought she’d seen the last of when he killed the man who knighted her. The man who was her father in everything but name, the very name she now carries.
Vi thought maybe she would be sent north. A large part of her wanted to strangle the man who’d killed her sister with her bare hands. Hells, Vi asked to be sent north, the name of that man whispered between the trees and the waves enough to make her blood boil.
She thought she’d be sent there. Or if not north,then at least maybe home. That her last minute volunteered duty would end, hope flirting with the image of brilliant blue eyes. That her role in the queen’s guard would curry favor in the eyes of whatever gods were watching, whatever power that be would drive her fate back into the arms of the only woman Vi’s ever broken an oath for.
She didn’t get to go home. No, her orders had come by raven, the parchment sealed in Kiramman golden wax. Vi was to lead a charge in this bloody beach by direct order from the queen.
Her eyes stung at the script on the page, the bluntness of the order a swift blow to her chest. And even though the script was that of some servant or Maester, Vi couldn’t help but picture her princess. If she could ever truly call Caitlyn hers , that is.
She was barely able to send letters to her, the parchment damp with the humid air, the ink bleeding and smudged enough Vi almost didn’t bother. But then she’d simply nicked strands of her hair, rolled it in the parchment and could only hope it would be enough to… to what? Remind her? She doesn’t even know now.
It went unanswered.
Vi hadn’t heard much of the princess’s impending engagement before she was shipped to the Stepstones. She hadn’t heard much of the princess at all. No letter, no raven inking the sky with its wings just for her.
Nothing more than the fabric favor she keeps in her breastplate, the rouge of Caitlyn’s lips still lingering on the now dirtied cloth. Lavender now bleeds with her own sweat, still just present enough to make Vi’s bones settle at night. She’s managed to not be caught kissing the rouge stain, her imagination all she can cling to.
She’s clung to the promise whispered against her lips, the barest hint of candlelight illuminating it. Weeks that bled into months she spent fucking yearning, ignoring the way her fellow knights goaded her and taunted her for not taking a woman to bed on their travels.
They’d say , “With a face like that you could have whoever you want!” Vi could only chuckle ruefully, fingers naturally finding comfort in the satin. There’s only one woman Vi can ever imagine being with that way again– she accepted long ago that she was ruined for anyone else. If she were being truly honest, she was ruined the moment “I choose Ser Violent Hound” left the princess’ lips.
She’d found more solace at the bottom of shitty bottles, content to take them back to her tent or room or spot on the fucking dirt until she was whisked into a sleep where her dreams were lighter. Where soft lips stretched into a smile just for her, where she touched the sky on a certain golden beast. Or that of a feathered mattress with Caitlyn’s cunt on her tongue.
When she’d wake, she was always met with the skeptical looks of her peers. Their eyes narrowed and their mouths twisted with wicked grins. “Oh I know that face, Hound.”
That particular morning, Vi had overslept. Three weeks before her company had even reached the Stepstones, her company camped in the woods between Storm’s End and Queen’s Landing, the closest she'd been to Caitlyn in months. And she wasn’t sure if she was grateful for it or not. Rumors finally found her company a few days ago that another engagement tour had the whole capitol in an uproar.
Only a new caveat shifted the very foundations of the realm.
“Who would’ve thought the Princess fancied pussy like the rest of us!”
Vi didn’t even think before she broke Ser Boris’ jaw. The other knights gave her a wide berth after that, muttering something about the Queen’s Guard and lances up their asses. Vi didn’t care. Not when she had a chance of…
Surely she would call for her now if the gossip were true. That she wouldn’t actually entertain ladies of the realm to take to wife instead of her.
But she never got the raven and the gossip of this new shift was weeks old. Stale like the bread they’re served in these shitty eastern taverns. And Vi wasn’t sure if she wanted them to be true anymore.
So Vi got rip-roaring drunk that night, she danced with a pretty girl that looked like Caitlyn before realizing her perfume was sickenly sweet, her eyes were the wrong color and the whole illusion was ruined. She went to sleep drunk and heart sick and woke wet and wanting with Caitlyn’s name heavy on her tongue.
So she knew before her comrades started their teasing she was in for it. Her tent had been taken down around her and both Logan and Steb– knights from no particular house as far as Vi could tell– were the cause for the broader scale of teasing.
“What face?” Vi grumbled around a mouth of dried meat.
“The love sick kind,” Logan jeered. Vi could only sigh and roll her eyes. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard this. But she still couldn’t stop the way her heart twisted. “It makes so much sense why you never go to the brothels with us! You have a lady! I didn’t think members of the queen’s guard could have–”
“There isn’t a lady and you’re right– we can’t so me going with the lot of you to stick my tongue in some woman’s cunt I don’t know wouldn’t happen regardless,” Vi snapped, standing from the log. Logan and Steb sat still, eyes doe-eyed for a moment.
And then Logan barked a laugh, one that Vi wanted to strangle out of her. “Ah the duty knows no love sort. I see. Won’t come up again, Ser,” Logan said between chuckles before Vi’s glare stopped the sound short. “Unless there is a lady because I believe I heard you calling for a Cait–”
“Go ready the fucking horses,” Vi muttered, stalking away after plucking the apple from Logan’s hand.
She didn’t let herself dream after that.
It’s a fool’s dream anyways to have thought her love would be enough to upend centuries of tradition. She knew what Caitlyn’s stubborn mind did not, that her place at Caitlyn’s side could be nothing more than what it was. A distant dream.
And gods does she cling to it now. When she closes her eyes, sweat clinging to her brow on a mattress that is more lumps than cushion, she imagines Caitlyn’s bed. Her arms wrapped around her, sweet everythings in her ear. She misses her.
She’d tried to dispel that truth some time ago. When she accepted that the dream– the delusion – of being with Caitlyn was akin to the sun rising in the west and setting in the east.
Hells, when did she become so cynical?
She looks down at the wound festering in her side. She grimaces, jaw clenching. Ah.
She’s accepted her fate, she thinks. Weeks–no, months that creep ever faster over a full two years– have passed without a word. And she can die now knowing she felt something as great as loving Caitlyn Kiramman at all.
Vi knows, with a hazy clarity and nothing else better to do than wallow in her regret, that her death will be her own fault.
She’d been reckless. The sea had risen in the midst of the fight, mist and salt and sun blinding her as she fought. Bodies were piled around her, their skin littered with the abrasions of the sea, leathered and almost appearing like coral. And she’d made a mistake, a misstep of crucial consequence.
She thought she heard the distinct whoosh of dragon's wings, her eyes cast to the cloudy sky when the rusted blade plunged between her armor, finding a bloody home in the side of her abdomen.
If not for Loris, she knows she’d be buried in that shallow fucking water, sand clogging her ears and the crabs feasting on her corpse.
That’d been… Vi can’t tell how many days have passed. The room she stays in is windowless and dim with only candle light flickering in the far corners. The castle they’ve harbored is an abandoned set of ruins from some lord Vi doesn’t know the name of. But they have rooms still intact where the dying and injured are held.
And Vi knows she’s both at this point.
Which is why she lets herself imagine again. Lets herself pretend she’s not in a room that smells of piss and stale earth with a wound on her side that’s making her skin feverish. She’s well and truly fucked.
There isn’t much the maester can do beyond clotting the bleeding and staving off infection (which as far as Vi can tell hasn’t worked for fuck all). Most knights weren’t even worth the man’s trouble but she still carries the cloak of the queen. She’s garnered more care than he wants to actually deliver.
But even then, all she can do is lie here and pretend the warmth radiating from her skin is due to the woman she has yet to shake out of her thoughts, her touch a mere phantom. She closes her eyes, pain still lancing through her muscles, ebbed only slightly from the dose of poppy’s milk, and lets herself dream.
It starts with her hands. Long fingers trail up the length of her arms, curling around the back of her neck. Vi sighs, this version of herself able to relax in a sea of pillows. Or perhaps in the leaves of the Godswood in the courtyard, their colors should be vibrant hues of gold and crimson.
Soft lips follow the path of her hands, kissing and licking her way up to the spot just under Vi’s ear. “I missed you,” she whispers, and gods her voice is wrapped in fine silk to Vi’s ears. She shudders, lips parting with her shaky exhale.
Vi doesn’t let her bitter questions linger here. Not in this dream. She doesn’t ask why she hasn’t sent for her. Why she was sent here after Mudtown. If she’s betrothed and wed and happy.
No. Here, she just basks in her kisses that pepper her clavicle, revels in the warmth all around her, dragonfire simmering low in her belly.
“I missed you the moment I left,” Vi confesses, eyes trying to stay open, to take in this hazy version of her. Midnight incarnate hovers above her, eyes soft and open. And when she kisses her, every ounce of restraint leaks out of her, desperation thick on her tongue with every swipe in her mouth. “Haven’t stopped missing you.”
She doesn’t remember shedding her clothes, the world around her some blended realm between the courtyard and Caitlyn’s chambers. Blue sky and stone walls converge while she melds into Caitlyn’s body, trying to grasp her taste, her touch. Her hands wandering and seeking when she finds Caitlyn’s swollen clit, her lungs stuttering on a sob at the wetness between her folds.
All for me.
Only for me.
Her own wetness slickens against her thighs, pooling around Caitlyn’s fingers as she slips inside, filling her up in a way she didn’t know she wanted. But fuck she doesn’t want the feeling to go away. Doesn’t want the languid pump of her fingers to stop, the short curl in her walls pulling the softest whimper from her lips.
“I love you,” Vi hears herself moan, her voice a distant thing to her own ears, pleasure finally alighting her body after months of cold, empty sheets. Her blood is hot under her skin, every press and roll of Caitlyn on top of her makes her keen, the clenching of Caitlyn’s walls around her fingers so euphoric she thinks not even the gods or dragons could know what heaven is.
Caitlyn shifts above her, lips moving along the edge of her jaw, breath stuttering against her skin. Her movements slow as she pulls back, eyes wide with the confession, as if Vi hasn’t whispered them before. Hasn’t branded Caitlyn and herself with every love bite in the shape of her teeth with it.
Caitlyn opens her mouth to speak—
A groan tears from Vi’s throat, the pain white hot and blinding. The dream dissolves in the palm of her hand, the walls and sky crashing like the waves just outside. The dream shifts for a moment, her body weightless where she still lies in a nameless courtyard. Wind whips through her hair, the leaves whirling up and around her, the tree branches above her restless and groaning. And when she looks, Caitlyn is barely there, still watching her with soft resignation. She reaches out, fingers trembling as she watches Caitlyn fade, desperate pleas on Vi’s lips.
Caitlyn’s voice is a tendril around her heart, a whispered thing that almost sounds… real.
“Vi…”
Her mind strains against her skull, her body feels like it’s seizing as pain fires up her spine, white hot iron from just beneath her ribcage. But the pain cools, simmering like dying embers in a hearth she thinks she can crackling if she strains hard enough.
“Violet, my love, it's alright.”
Vi sucks in a breath as the voice washes over her, the sound fighting through the haze that sits over her mind like a fog. She must still be dreaming.
“I’ve done what I can for now, Princess,” another voice says, more distant than Caitlyn’s.
“Thank you, Maester,” she hears Caitlyn say. What an odd dream this is. A few moments pass, the air is something more breathable than before.
“Is it true you brought her here on dragonback, Your Grace?”
“Mhmm. It was quicker than the Queen’s Road.”
“Was her condition… forgive me for asking, Princess but was she not prone to falling in her condition?”
She hears Caitlyn chuckle, but the sound has no humor.
“You don’t need to be concerned, I had her,” she answers, voice bordering on snapping.
Vi doesn’t hear a reply, doesn’t hear the door click shut, sleep and something milky pulling her under.
She doesn’t dream. Or maybe she does. It’s all dark skies and the sound of wings cutting through the clouds.
Vi feels herself crawl back to some state of consciousness when a tender warmth blooms across her palm, up her forearm and back again. Over and over. She knows this warmth. This touch. And when Vi finally peels her eyes open, her lids heavy and her head still shades of fuzzy, she stops breathing. Her heart feels like it will surely crawl out of her throat at the sight of her.
“Is–” Vi clears her throat, voice raw, the pain in her side now a dull ache. “Is this a dream, Princess?”
Caitlyn looks down at her, their hips brushing where she sits at the edge of Vi’s cot– no. Not her cot. She’s in a bed. One she never thought she’d lie in again. This isn’t real.
Vi finds her gaze, her eyes, blue and open and soft , rake over where Vi lies, lips parted in a way that begs Vi to kiss them. She won’t get to do that again, though, will she?
And then Caitlyn’s hands are on her face, cradling her jaw, Vi can’t swallow the pathetic whimper that escapes her lips. Caitlyn’s scent permeates the air, soothing and floral with a hint of dragon that Vi would never admit comforts her.
“I surely hope not,” Caitlyn says, eyes flickering with something Vi can’t name. She isn’t convinced she’s awake, that the fever hasn’t finally ruptured her mind to plague her with hallucinations. Caitlyn’s thumbs stroke the crescents of her cheeks, shadows spilling over Caitlyn’s raven hair from the hearth Vi didn’t even know was here.
“How’re you here?”
She reaches up, circling Caitlyn’s wrist with her fingers, shuddering a breath when she’s truly met with skin, with the leather that clings to her arms. She looks like she hasn’t changed in days, her hair unkempt and her eyes tireHer heartbeat is quick under the skin, vibrant against Vi’s thumb.
Vi feels her eyes prickle, feels her lungs all but collapse in her chest. Before Vi can speak, before she can ask how or why she’s here– if she’s really here – Caitlyn shifts on the mattress, her voice low and soft.
“I came to find you in the Stepstones,” she starts, thumbs still soft against Vi’s cheeks. “I… When I arrived I was told you were– you had almost–” her breath hitches and her eyes turn misty before she squeezes them shut. Vi tightens her hold on Caitlyn’s wrist, keeping her questions at bay, keeping her urges to pull Caitlyn fully against her. “Well, I thought you were dead when I found you.”
“Are you sure I’m not? It feels like I might be,” Vi admits.
Vi is a weak fool. She kisses the center of Caitlyn’s palm when she opens her eyes, mouth twisted in painful grimace.
“I strapped you to myself and Nyra. I fastened the contraption myself with Ser Talis’s help and I flew us back to the Keep. I couldn’t– I wouldn’t leave you there.”
Vi keeps her lips pressed to Caitlyn’s palm, unable to stop the baffled scoff from fanning out across the skin. If this is real, of course Caitlyn would strap her to that golden beast.
She releases Caitlyn’s hand, mourning the loss of the warmth on her jaw when Caitlyn lowers it to her lap. “So I have you to thank for not dying at the hands of the crabs and for not falling to my death,” Vi tries at teasing, her smirk not meeting her eyes as the mask of it all but transparent as reality sinks her soul like a stone in dark water.
Her imagination is vivid, sure. But not so much that she could conjure the exact threadbare of the sheets caressing her skin. Of the warmth emanating from the hearth. The new callouses lining Caitlyn’s palms.
She’s truly here. Not in some sorry excuse for a cot fighting over a trade route that will never see peace. She’s here. In Caitlyn’s chambers. In Caitlyn’s bed as if she never left. But she did.
Caitlyn doesn’t laugh. She sighs, jaw clenching while her eyes look anywhere but at her. It doesn’t make sense. Why’s she’s here. In this castle– fuck in these chambers– why didn’t she call for me sooner?
“You don’t need to thank me,” Caitlyn says softly. She chews her bottom lip, teeth leaving an indent in the skin Vi has dreamt of for months. She wants to reach forward, to pull the flesh free with her thumb. To taste it with her lips afterwards. “But I… I have more to tell you.”
This is it. Vi is no fool. She may be in her bed now, her– the – princess has always been kinder than she lets on. Too sweet for her own good. But she can only be preparing her for what Vi knows to be inevitable.
“I know you probably know what’s happened in the north,” Caitlyn starts, her cheeks flushed already. Vi tastes dread like bile in her throat while she waits. “I know when we decided who to name as the new Lord of the North, the word spread so quickly I couldn’t stop it from even reaching the Stepstones…” Caitlyn’s rambling, her nerves straining her voice in a way that only makes Vi sink further into the feather pillows.
And in truth, Vi had heard of the whispers of the new Warden. Not by name, the likes of her company felt they were all the same in the end so there wasn’t much discussion of it. But what she has heard is enough to make her chest ache. The new Warden is rumored to be a knight of a long fallen house. Others like Logan and Steb were more privy to the rumor that they were actually a knight of the Queen’s Guard, plucked out of their knighthood to soon be placed on the throne rumored to be made of ice.
Vi knows the latter not to be true. The throne in Winterfell is nothing more than hard stone. Throne is a generous word for it from what she remembers as a child. She was born and raised in the north before being driven east. Before Vander found her and Powder half dead in the woods after her village had been ravaged.
Her life from there had been anything but pretty. She’d been sent on a ship to the free cities on behalf of House Hound when her status as his steward and potential heir saw the men conspiring. Her naivety saw her betrayal hit her as the water of the Guardian’s Sea slapped her back.
She wouldn’t return for years, more scars and ink littering her skin than ever before. She came back hardened to House Hound all but decimated, to Vander in the charred remains of his castle alive enough to knight her. And the Eye of the Bolton’s had been branded in the stone that remained, her sister vanished.
Caitlyn’s steady, shy gaze brings her back now. Vi can’t discern why something in it holds expectancy. Vi has no answer beyond the small nod for her to continue. She thinks this might be a more tortuous death than the rusted sword she took on the beach.
The color on Caitlyn’s cheeks grows darker, a pretty blush crawls down the column of her throat that Vi feels like a hot iron brand on her own skin.
Seven hells she needs to get it together.
Caitlyn takes a shaky breath, fingerings moving idly across the swirled pattern of the duvet before the arrow is driven into Vi’s heart. “I am to wed the new Lord of Winterfell.”
Vi doesn’t speak for a few moments. She’s not sure she’s even breathing. But then Caitlyn speaks again, the corners of her mouth quirking upward in a sly smirk that makes Vi’s insides weak. “To the realm, of course, the union is just a show of good faith that the incessant uprisings are a thing of the past. It pleased my mother, at least. But… we’ll know the truth.”
She’s suddenly aware of the silken favor still in her pocket. Of the promise sealed in the rouge shape of her lips. Vi thinks she might vomit.
It’s one thing to watch the woman she loves betrothed to another for duty alone. Hells, she couldn’t stomach being here while it happened, her heart too weak to linger in this city. She knew battle would be easier. But then Caitlyn had kissed promises into her skin, whispered a hope that Vi let herself cling to all this time.
This is a heartbreak she didn’t foresee. To see Caitlyn so… content. No, Vi thinks, an ugly feeling taking root in her chest, the princess seems satisfied . Happy.
Was it so long ago that she abhorred the duties of her station? That the idea of marriage to anyone set her teeth on edge? Or no, was it only that Caitlyn didn’t love the suitors picked by her mother?
An even uglier thought pricks behind her eyes. That this new lord, this young knight made noble had captured Caitlyn’s heart in a way Vi never did. Unshed tears prick behind her eyes and her chest tightens to the point of pain that rivals the fucking stab wound at her side.
And Caitlyn is still looking at her like that. That shade of blue has haunted her for so long. She knows every shade of it. She knows the blackened sea of them when Vi loves her with her tongue. Or the cerulean light when she’s on dragonback, more free than she’s been in her life. But this shade in front of her is somehow both foreign and so achingly familiar as the sea and midnight sky stares down at her with a fullness Vi is too lovesick and heartbroken to name.
Vi sucks in a breath, the air still and harsh in her lungs when she finally mutters, “Why am I here, Princess?”
Caitlyn has the gall to stiffen where she sits. Her brow scrunches in the middle with a confusion that makes Vi want to cry harder. Was she just– did the years spent with her vanish into the very sea Vi’s fought in for over a year?
“Do– do you not want to be here?”
The lump in Vi’s throat swells. Why is she– how can she ask her this when she’s done nothing but ache for her since the moment her feet hit the road? When her letters lamenting just that have gone unanswered and now she’s here, in Caitlyn’s bed, facing the only thing she’s run from in her life.
“I…”
I only ever want to be here.
The words are trapped in her throat, her right to say them long passed. She should never have left.
Vi knows she won’t sleep after she flinches from Caitlyn’s touch, fingertips featherlight against her wrist. She regrets it immediately, every ounce of rejection and bitter hurt seeps out of her in favor of wanting to pull Caitlyn into her lap with the way her face crumples, her bottom lashes misty. But it’s a flicker of an expression, not there long enough for Vi to catch it or fix it in time before it’s replaced with a mask of wavering indifference.
“Right,” she mutters, seemingly more to herself than to Vi. “I thought–” a small, humorless huff follows as she stands, hands wringing in front of her. Vi can only sit, lips parted while her insides feel like they’re being gutted and flayed for one of the Queen’s feasts.
Caitlyn squeezes her eyes shut, face twisted with a pain Vi can’t understand. Did she want Vi to rejoice in her newfound engagement? Does she want Vi to be her–
She doesn’t finish that thought. Caitlyn wouldn’t ask that of her, surely. Not while knowing Vi loves her as she does, even if the feelings have been replaced for her.
“I need you to come with me to Winterfell at first light. My mother is eager to get the appointment ceremony over with so we can be wed here before the first leaves turn,” she says quickly.
Vi blanches, gripping the sheets between her fingers. She can’t meet the person who will get to hold the other half of Vi’s heart. She surely did not survive just to be thrust into this hell.
She means to protest, to put up more of a fight or to just sob in the most undignified way. But all that comes out is the wobbled, “Cait, please…” Don’t make me do this , goes unsaid, her eyes surely giving her away as Caitlyn always says they do.
Caitlyn hiccups, turning away to face the door, and if Vi’s own eyes weren’t so blurry and watery, she would see the way the princess’ shoulders quake.
“Get some rest,” she says softly, leaving Vi without another word.
The sheets are cold when Vi wakes.
If Caitlyn returned to her chambers at any point, Vi wouldn’t know. The only hints of her are in the lingering perfume that, despite everything, still soothes her. She knows she imagines the barest indent in the pillow next to her, probably from her own restless sleep.
She takes a moment to look around the room, the details frozen in time from when she was here last. Some things look untouched from when she left, the cushions still deep emerald, the brushes and scattered parchment across her desk have collected dust.
And it’s with a heartbreaking realization that her letters are nowhere in sight. She isn’t sure how she has tears left, most of them still a damp imprint on the pillows that still smell like Caitlyn. But they fall anyway, her eyes sore and her cheeks no doubt splotchy. She wipes them away furiously.
No armor is brought to her when the handmaidens come to help her dress, their faces all tinted with a blush that Vi herself echoes.
Vi clears her throat when she sees the garments being laid out on the edge of one of the cushions. “What is this?”
One of the maids, Talia, she recognizes, simply starts trying to disrobe her as she quips, “The riding leathers tailored by the Princess for you. Did she not tell you? She’ll be expecting you in the dragon pit, my lord.”
Vi refrains from protesting to them. Riding leathers are not a gift to refute from the Kirammans. In fact, Vi can’t recall seeing anyone outside of Caitlyn’s family with leathers like this– no other family rides dragons. The only instance Vi can think of is the Queen fashioning a set for her soon-to-be husband. Caitlyn told her they’d been a wedding gif–
Vi grabs her wrist before she can continue. “I can dress myself.”
Talia gives her a quizzical look, one that makes Vi even more confused than the night before. Even when she and the princess were– she’s never been on the receiving end of this type of incessant coddling. She’d figured out how to strap her armor on herself in the years before and after Caitlyn. How hard could riding leathers be?
She doesn’t figure it out for some time once she convinces the handmaidens she has no need for them. There are so many straps and buckles, the material skin tight and impossibly warm it almost feels suffocating. But she can’t deny how soft they are where each layer clings to her skin.
They’re a dark charcoal, the sleeves lined with an illusion of dragon scales, inlet with hues of crimson and flecks of Kiramman gold thread between them. She doesn’t fail to notice the Kiramman crest embroidered on each shoulder, and she wonders bitterly if her betrothed will have their own leathers made.
She shoves her shoulder against the doors to leave, not meeting the eyes of anyone daring to look at her as she marches through halls, self conscious at the lack of armor.
There’s nothing that can make her less queasy about what will transpire today. Maybe Noxian whiskey. But every step she takes fills her with a dread so heavy her knees want to buckle.
She’s sure one day she’ll be able to perform her duties again. That she can be the knight Caitlyn saw in her in the throne room all those years ago. Vi is determined to be that again, knowing in her soul she’s unwilling to be parted from her again. But she isn’t there yet.
And when they return with her betrothed in tow, no doubt, she’ll ask for leave. She’ll take whatever consequence that request will bring upon her. None of them could be worse than watching her princess love someone else. And then she would return, when her heart is smaller.
The dragon pit has always unnerved her. The beasts that reside here are the very epitome of gods, their power so undeniable any normal person should be afraid. But for once, it’s not the dragons that have her heart threatening to crawl out of her throat.
Just as Talia told her, Caitlyn stands in the center of the uncovered area of the pit, her own riding leathers the matching set to Vi’s. For what reason other than a cruel coincidence, Vi doesn’t know what to think of that. A part of her hopes it strikes this new warden right where Vi’s been cleaved.
Behind her, almost impatient, Nyra looms over her, wings the same glittering gold, veins webbed and stretching under the early morning sun.
Caitlyn watches her approach, her face neutral save for the brief flicker in her eyes as she takes Vi in. She knows that look. She dreamt of that look– she’s worn it on her face. Hunger and love a conflated thing in deep blue irises. Vi’s breath stutters when their eyes meet, and for a moment, Vi forgets about the way her heart is in jagged pieces behind her ribs.
“Did you sleep well?” Caitlyn asks in lieu of a greeting. Her voice is level, practiced. Vi nods, knowing if she spoke it would just be a lie or even worse, the truth. She looks up to see where the golden dragon is already dipping her head toward Vi, wings tucking up against her sides. She tries not to flinch, staying still when large nostrils blow over her face before she’s being nudged in the chest by Nyra’s snout.
“She was quite distraught when she saw you last,” Caitlyn says quietly, her sudden closeness sending a shiver down Vi’s spine. Her hands stay on Nyra’s head, leaning into the rumbling warmth while her feet have to adjust from the weight.
“Hmm, are you sure she didn’t think I was a meal?” Vi teases.
“She doesn’t let anyone besides myself and the dragon handlers touch her like this. And you,” she says with a humorless scoff. Vi’s mouth twitches, breath hitching when Caitlyn’s hand presses into her dragon’s neck, gloved fingers brushing her own.
Vi changes the subject. “How long is the flight?” She’s proud that her voice doesn’t wobble albeit it’s still weak.
“We should land close to nightfall,” she answers, taking a step back.
“I’m surprised your mother isn’t demanding the royal entourage for this seeing how you’re finally doing what she’s wanted,” Vi says before she can think better of it, averting her gaze to the shimmering golden scales.
Caitlyn just stares at her, every ounce of hurt Vi feels written as clear as ink on her face. Neither of them speak at first, and Vi wants to swallow the bitter tasting words back down her throat.
Vi can’t stop herself from reaching this time, fingers flexing and curling around the leather gloves before Caitlyn blinks, righting herself. “I told her we wanted to be alone for this. I gave her the awaited task of planning the wedding,” she says coolly, but the furrow in her brow betrays her.
“Sorry, Princess. Forgive me,” Vi says more earnestly, biting the inside of her cheek. How selfish can she be?
Vi isn’t prepared to sit in the saddle with her, isn’t prepared for Caitlyn’s hand to press gently into her side, checking the wound that pales in comparison to the bloody organ in her chest. She isn’t prepared for the way Caitlyn straps them together while the dragon handlers soothe Nyra in their ancient tongue, the dragon having grown fidgety.
Caitlyn sits in front of her, hips cradled between Vi’s thighs, sandwiching her between Caitlyn’s warm back and the lip of the saddle. The hard leather comes up to press into her shoulders and Vi thinks this is a new kind of torture.
They’re clipped and tied together, some contraption of Caitlyn and Lord Talis’s making. The harness is tight across Vi’s chest, the golden clasps buckling at her front and Caitlyn’s back, another garment that was made for Vi for whatever reason. She’ll cling to the memory of Caitlyn’s steady hands when she’d fastened it, the way her knuckles had grazed over neglected nipples–
“Do you remember how to hang on?” Caitlyn asks over shoulder, eyes hesitantly playful. Vi huffs, finally settling her arms around Caitlyn’s waist, hands splayed out across the faux scales and soft leather hugging her abdomen.
Her smell is intoxicating, the soaps and perfumes at her hair and neck make her dizzy, masking the smell of dragon all around them. Caitlyn chuckles, gloved hand gripping Vi’s wrist before quipping, “You’ll need to hold me tighter, love.”
She doesn’t know if the endearment registers for Caitlyn the way it wrecks Vi. The word feels hauntingly cruel and sweet all at once, and Vi can’t stop the full body shiver from raking like claws down her spine. She squeezes her tighter, almost too tight if Caitlyn’s sharp gasp is anything to go by, and for a few breathless moments, she lets her lips rest at the nape of Caitlyn’s neck, the long, raven braid tickling her nose. “Is that better?” she hums against her skin.
Caitlyn’s only answer is the silken, “ Sōvēs, Nyra!”
Her wings expand and in a single breath, the earth grows smaller. “Shit, shit, shit!” Vi curses, clinging to Caitlyn tighter as the sky greets them with her cloudy vastness. She almost doesn’t hear Caitlyn’s laugh, the wind robbing her of any other sense that isn’t Caitlyn.
And she clings to that, to the freedom of finally being able to hold her after so long. Before it will be someone else in the saddle with her. And if Vi lets her lips brush the nape of her neck again throughout the flight, Caitlyn doesn’t mention it.
Snow kisses Nyra’s wings as they land.
The castle is larger than Vi remembers, but the woods and damp earth smell familiar, a bone-deep nostalgia that isn’t quite home. The region here has long called itself Zaun, the unofficial title evident in the war-soaked road.
House Bolton wanted a revolt in the guise of freedom. But even Vi knows Silco meant to climb the ladder of chaos until he could bring a war to the Gold Keep’s steps if it meant the North became its own kingdom.
Vi lands on shaky legs, her hips and knees weak from the hours in the sky. She doesn’t know how Caitlyn does it for long and still maintains her ability to stand unaffected.
“Are you feeling alright?” she asks after a moment, hands finding Vi’s forearms when she takes a shaky step.
“Peachy.”
“I’m sure there’s warm food waiting for us,” she says, keeping her hand in the crux of Vi’s elbow as they walk toward the imposing gates. Vi huffs, the breath fogging in front of her. So she is also to dine with them?
They’re greeted with every expected manner of decorum. The bowed heads and the “Princess,” “Your Highness,” “Your Grace,” and the likes by guards and those who have survived Silco’s incursion. Kiramman knights and northernmen alike litter the castle, all of them seeming to expect Caitlyn’s arrival.
They’re handed cloaks made of thick furs from animals Vi doesn’t even know the names of, but she’s grateful for the warmth even if she thinks it odd they’re given to her. Do they not realize she is nothing more than a knight? Seven hells she knows some of these men from the Gold Keep– and yet all of them bow their heads as she passes.
When they enter the wide courtyard of Winterfell, Vi waits, Caitlyn still on her arm, holding her upright, for the one Caitlyn has set aside her principles for. The one who will fill the space that Vi isn’t good enough for. She wants to turn and walk right back out of the gates, to maybe join the dire wolves or hells go back to the seas or–
“My Lord, it’s such a delight to finally meet you,” someone says, and Vi looks around, her jaw clenching and why is Caitlyn still holding her? And it’s then that Vi realizes the man, a tall, broad figure with a face too kind for this region, is looking at her.
“My name is Claggor of house Hudson, the Princess left me to help Lord Ekko see to the castle until you could arrive,” he says, gripping Vi’s forearm.
Vi blinks hard, Caitlyn’s voice muffled behind the pounding in her ears when she says, “Is he here? There’s still much to discuss.”
And it’s only then that Vi sees the banners that hang from the stone walls of the courtyard. A double-headed wolf surrounded by a red shield and licks of flames– The Hounds.
“How did Silco die?” Vi blurts in lieu of a greeting, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears. But she needs to know. Claggor chuckles, gesturing with his head for a broad knight to step forward, their helmet obscuring their face.
“Ser Nilo delivered the final blow. Saved Lord Ekko’s life.”
The knight bows their head, the sigil on their armor the same as the banners. “My house was always a loyal supporter of Lord Vander. It’s an honor to serve the rightful heir,” they say, and Vi doesn’t get to reply before Claggor claps his hands.
But Vi still stares, breath fogging in front of her as she struggles to breathe. Vander had no heirs.
“To answer your question, Princess, Lord Ekko is already waiting in the dining hall with the little Lady Isha, who, by the way, would like nothing more than to meet your dragon.”
“First thing on the morrow,” Caitlyn chuckles, the sound warm and airy. “After the ceremony.”
“Of course, Princess. Most if not all of the Northern houses are already here. But for now, come.”
Lord Ekko is not what Vi expects.
She hasn’t spoken a word since meeting Claggor– a stable hand who climbed the ranks in the face of Silco– and Caitlyn, having finally let go of her arm, has yet to reach for her again. Reality has yet to settle for her, every step and sight of this castle feels more like a dream.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but I was Lord Benzo’s bastard. We would visit Lord Vander’s new castle in the east in the summers.”
She does remember, albeit barely. It’s been so many years and truthfully she isn’t sure if she’s even here, that didn’t die on that bloody godsforsaken beach. Or maybe she fell off Nyra, afterall.
“We called you ‘Little Man’,” Vi says finally, hints of her past a blurry mirage like a ripple in water. But the man smiles, all teeth and a small chuckle before it drops.
The food in front of her reaches her in thick curls of steam. Rice and prime meat make her stomach growl when it’s placed before her. She sits at Caitlyn’s right, the table full of faces she’s never seen but seem so at home here, like they’ve finally righted a decades’ worth of wrong doing. Lord Ekko sits across from them, his doublet carrying the crest of his house a winged firelight, green velvet and dark furs contrasting with the snow white of his hair.
And the child… the child that sits to his left stares at her, eyes hazel and unblinking. But Vi would know their shape anywhere. After they were introduced, Ekko explained who the girl is, explained who the ring on his finger tied him to.
“She only got to hold Isha for a few moments,” he said, and Vi was grateful the food hadn’t been served yet for she surely would’ve been unable to keep it down. And while the grief rips through her anew, she also feels a sense of peace. That her sister found love, found a home when Vi thought her tortured or left for dead.
Caitlyn remains solid at her side, her hand finding hers when Ekko first spoke of Powder, squeezing the fingers until Vi squeezed back.
He tells them about their wedding and how they met as they eat. And Vi finds herself smiling as she steals glances from the child who has been shifting closer to Ekko throughout the evening.
“Which, speaking of weddings,” Ekko starts, only pausing to bid a man named Scar goodnight as he stands from the table. Vi’s blood freezes over and her knee bounces under the table. She doesn’t look anywhere but at a scar in the wood of the table as he continues. “I hear we owe you both our congratulations,” Ekko says around a hefty bite.
Caitlyn hums, taking a sip of the red wine from her cup. “We thank you–my mother is certainly pleased save for how it happened. You and the new lady of Winterfell are of course invited to the capitol for the ceremony.” The child perks up at that, looking up to her father with eyes Vi knows are all Powder.
Vi whips her head to look at Caitlyn, mouth parting to speak. Anger boils under her skin that she would– that her sister’s daughter is invited to Caitlyn’s wedding when Vi is–
“I will say, it's pretty… unconventional that you get named the new Lord of Winterfell and now will be the King consort, Vi,” Ekko chuckles, taking a sip of his own wine. “But I think the people here trust you being Vander’s heir. They know the kind of knight you were. Although, it leaves me here to sit in your stead.”
By now, everyone else has retired to bed, their meal long finished and Vi had only just accepted that she wouldn’t have to face Caitlyn’s betrothed tonight, her nerves still a coiled snare in her gut when Claggor speaks.
“Oh don’t act like you don’t love it. You struck this deal on purpose did you not? Best of everything and all that?” Claggor laughs, gesturing between Caitlyn and Ekko with a candid casualness that can only imply familiarity. How long was Caitlyn here for? Vi adds that to her list of growing questions.
Vi doesn’t move now, doesn’t breathe as she stares at them both. “I-I’m not…” Vi tries, shaking her head, but her voice sounds garbled around the lump in her throat. Ekko scrunches his brow, looking between the two women in front of him.
“Are you sure she only suffered a stab wound, Princess?” Ekko teases. No one laughs but Claggor, the chuckle dry and short.
Instead, Caitlyn’s careful fingers cast a featherlight touch to Vi’s arm, grazing the muscles still clad in the dragon leathers. “Violet?”
Gods.
Caitlyn’s eyes are bright in the dim hall, blue midnight searching for where Vi can’t meet her yet. Vi’s own eyes burn, and she blinks. Hard.
Oh, she needs to–
Vi stands, her chair screeching against the stone. Caitlyn, Ekko, and Claggor stare up at her and all Vi can utter is, “I need some air.”
She doesn’t wait for a reply. Her feet take her through the foreign halls. Dark stone and torchlight and banners she didn’t think she’d see again.
Vi gasps lungfuls of air when she finally finds her way outside. It fills her, crisp and cold late evening air, hints of smoke too. She keeps walking. Her boots leave snow-sunken footprints in her wake when she reaches the main courtyard. She thinks. It doesn’t matter.
She’s met with the same reverence as before from knights and servants alike. Bowed heads. My Lord. The cloak still clings to her shoulders, the fur replacing the once stark blood-red. She hardly addresses any of them beyond a silent nod. What would she even say?
And yet as she walks, all she can think is what a fucking fool she’s been. But then, Caitlyn never said–
“Shit!”
Golden scales and narrowed green eyes startle her in her aimless wandering. She doesn’t recall leaving the gates to wind up here. Nyra lifts her head and huffs, warm breath blowing over her like hot steam. She’s not been eaten yet, but every time she’s encountered the dragon, Caitlyn has always been here.
Vi stands frozen, heart surely about to fall out of her ass when Nyra nudges her chest, sounds Vi vaguely remembers are a sign of… content? Or was it contempt? Fuck. She hasn’t bared her teeth, and if Vi were being honest, she would say Nyra is really just a giant cat with wings sometimes.
She’s braver than before when she palms the side of the dragon’s head. “You’re really just a softy, aren’t you?”
The dragon makes a low rumbling sound, and Vi knows she couldn’t understand her, but she would later swear on her life that the creature actually appeared offended. “I don’t mean that unkindly,” says Vi, hands still holding Nyra’s head. And with a more relaxed chuff, the dragon pulls back, readjusting on the snowy ground.
“You aren’t cold out here?”
Vi slaps a palm over her face. She’s a bloody dragon. Of course she’s not cold.
And in looking at the beast now, Vi’s chest aches with every ounce of longing she’s harbored, every self concocted resentment seeping out of with long exhales.
“Did you know?”
She doesn’t know why she asks, the words fanning out in the whispered fog of her breath. The dragon blinks her eyes open, and to Vi’s utter horrid embarrassment, snorts.
“Right,” Vi sighs, rubbing a hand over where her heart practically pushes against her ribcage. And it’s only now that she realizes the depth of what she’s done. That every hopeful look and lingering touch was not the remnants of this entangled greed of wanting both her new wife and Vi’s comfort. It was all for Vi.
Caitlyn’s chambers lie in the castle’s guest house.
Sitting atop natural hot springs ensures the chambers warmth and comfort, the protection of the Godswood surrounding it in their deep carmine leaves and whitewood trees. It’s a sight Vi knows she doesn’t deserve the comfort of.
When Ser Nilo pointed Vi in the direction without a question, it only confirmed the breadth of Vi’s foolishness. That there was never this broad shouldered- stranger meant to tie themselves to Caitlyn. That the only bone-headed bloke she would have to face to internally war over Caitlyn’s affections is her own self.
A maid opens the door when Vi knocks. Her hair looks born of the godswood tree, red velvet locks curled and stark against the charcoal furs and layered linens she wears. It doesn’t take Vi more than a moment to realize the girl is a wildling or some descendant of one. A scar runs down the side of her face, and Vi knows there’s more than meets the eye.
“My Lord,” the woman says. She dips her chin, green eyes hesitant as she waits for Vi to speak her business. Vi knows she’ll never be used to this, a swarm of muddied feelings cakes her insides as she realizes it will only get worse. But the reason for it makes a storm of butterflies erupt in her belly.
“I’m here to my– to see the princess,” Vi says plainly, trying her hand at this role.
“Of course you are. Come.”
She follows the woman through the smaller house, the walls warm and softer than the main castle. The maid knocks once, waits for Caitlyn’s assent.
The maid opens the door, the wood sighing with a heavy creak. Vi stays at the threshold, watching the woman approach Caitlyn before stopping in the middle of the candle-lit room.
“What is it? The hour has grown late.”
Something in Vi breaks at the tremor in her princess’ voice.
“Lord Violet Hound, Your Grace,” the maid says with another small bow.
“Oh.”
Vi hears the sheets rustle before the pads of bare feet meet warm stone. Vi keeps her eyes down, words rolling in her head that don’t feel nearly sorry enough.
“You may leave us, Rae,” says Caitlyn. And without another word, the door clicks softly behind her, leaving them alone for the first time not on dragonback.
Neither of them speak for a while, Vi finally allowing herself to take Caitlyn in. The sleeprobe that wraps around her like an embrace. Her hair, fallen from its braid and golden combs, frames the hollow of her cheeks like spilled ink on fine parchment. The light is dim here, only small candles line the desk and walls, flames sinking deep in the wax. But it’s enough for Vi to see her eyes, red-rimmed and wet lashes, the irises glassy.
And finally, Caitlyn speaks, voice wobbly and strained. “I assume you’ve come to tell me that our future union displeases you.”
Caitlyn crosses her arms over her chest, tongue darting out to wet her lips as her eyes rake over Vi too. She must be quite the site. Dark cloak and dragon leathers still cling to her skin, her cheeks stained with both the bitter and remorseful tears.
And she realizes with another wave of both relief and embarrassment at what she wears on her body. Her wedding gift.
She doesn’t speak as she unclasps her cloak, letting it fall in a pool of dark fur, a wolf at her feet, leaving only the dragon behind. Caitlyn’s breath hitches when Vi takes a careful step towards her, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides.
When she reaches her, Caitlyn closes her eyes, a stray tear she knows Caitlyn meant to keep slips free. And with an aching tenderness, Vi reaches up, fingers feather light to cradle her jaw. She leans in, lips grazing the corner of her eye.
“I’ve come to tell you many things,” Vi breathes, kissing the crescent of her cheek. The corner of her mouth. The bridge of her nose. She isn’t sure she can stop now, her body needing to correct the distance that nearly drowned her.
“But that ,”she husks, lips finally hovering over Caitlyn’s trembling ones. “I would never tell you that.” She gives in for a moment, letting their lips brush enough to calm the beast that growls under her skin, but still holds fast so that she can finally whisper, “My wife.”
The kiss is starvation incarnate. It’s an unrestrained desire that starts with a gasp that Vi swallows whole. Her fingers find a home in Caitlyn’s hair, the kiss deepening when she tugs at the nape. Their lips meet over and over until Vi licks into her mouth, earning a moan and whimper from both of them.
She keeps kissing her even when her lungs demand air, reveling in the feeling of Caitlyn’s palms running up the length of her arms, her shoulders before nails scrape up the side of her neck, stopping to hold Vi’s face with such a tenderness Vi feels her eyes burn. So she kisses her harder, teeth scraping over her swollen bottom lip before soothing over it with her tongue, suckling the flesh until she really can’t breathe.
When they finally break, gasping and unwilling to go further than a single breath, Vi murmurs, “I dreamt of you. I dreamt you’d come to find me and bring me back to you. And then when you did I thought you didn’t want me.”
Caitlyn shudders, fingers gripping at the longer side of her hair, pulling at the snow-flecked strands.
“Violet.”
Vi kisses her again, softer but no less heated as the confession washes over her. She’s come here for a reason beyond the quickly building ache between her thighs, she reminds herself. “I’m so sorry,” Vi says, kissing the corner of her mouth down to her chin. She pulls back, hands still holding the edges of her jaw, Caitlyn’s head cradled in her large palms. She meets Caitlyn’s gaze, the blue eclipsed by the pulsing black of midnight, her lips kiss swollen and parted as she levels her own confession. “I– I’ve been such a fool, Caitlyn.”
Caitlyn doesn’t argue, but her brow furrows, hands gentle where she touches her face, encouraging her to continue. “I thought you’d found someone else and that I…” Vi chuckles humorlessly, unable to do anything else to stop herself from rambling.
“You thought I would marry anyone that isn’t you?” Disbelief hangs on her words, a new hurt that Vi can only answer with a pathetic nod.
“I didn’t see how you could. I come from nothing and I’m still not sure this is even real. That I didn’t die on that fucking beach.”
“Oh, Violet,” is kissed onto her lips, coaxing her and soothing her as the years of hurt well and bubble out like a flooded well. “My love, I promised you. I told you then as I’m telling you now.” She seals it with peppered kisses on her lips, salt now bleeding into the taste from tears Vi was so sure she had no more of. “I missed you so much I thought I was going mad. I’ve been waiting for you since you left my chambers two years ago.”
Vi swallows, her lungs hardly expanding when she sucks in a breath. She wants to crumple at her feet, to worship her from the ground up– to make sure she’s real, that this is real. But she is real. Lavender and smoke fills her nose, Caitlyn’s skin, soft and smooth under her fingertips, pebbles with gooseflesh where Vi strokes, and warmth, so much tangible warmth, melts her from the inside out.
Vi wets her lips, eyes lidded when she finds Caitlyn’s darkening blue gaze.
“Then have me.”
Their next kiss is bruising, tongue and teeth holding the thread that ties pleasure and pain when they meet over and over. Time has made anything less than this intolerable and Vi has no intention of making her wait anymore, sliding her hands under the heavy robe, pushing it off Caitlyn’s shoulders until it joins Vi’s cloak on the floor.
The leathers are harder to come off, the clothes skin tight and clinging where Vi’s body has stretched them, forcing them to mold to the power Caitlyn hadn’t yet accounted for when she commissioned them. It’s much harder than when Vi put these on herself just this morning with the way both of their hands shake, buckles and straps slipping between their fingers. The material gets caught on her arms and hips, both of them impatiently yanking them off to join everything else until Caitlyn stops.
“You kept this? After all this time?”
She holds the dirtied silken favor, having pulled it from where Vi kept it tucked inside her chest wraps. Heat crawls up Vi’s neck, flushing down to her bare chest and up to the tips of her ears. She takes it, kissing the almost faded shape of Caitlyn’s mouth before dropping it to the floor.
“I waited for you too,” is all Vi can muster before Caitlyn sheds her of everything down to her boots, lips and teeth sending jolts of honeyed pleasure everywhere on her way back up, stopping just below her ribs. She doesn’t let Caitlyn linger on the healing wound at her side, her eyes going soft and misty before Vi pulls her up her hair to claim her mouth, tongue possessive and needy all at once.
“They really are beautiful,” Vi mutters after they part, moving her head so her teeth scrape the spot under her ear, shivering slightly as Caitlyn’s silk-wrapped body presses into her, needing more, more, more–
“I couldn’t– ah– resist having them made for you,” Caitlyn gasps when Vi fingers graze her stiffening nipples through the sheer nightgown. She pinches lightly, already kiss drunk while instinct and years of lonely wanting hums under her skin. Vi sighs into her mouth when she cups the supple flesh of her breasts, squeezing– “Spirits, Violet, get this off me and touch me properly.”
“Of course, Princess,” Vi smirks behind the jolt of arousal that is already making a mess between her shaky legs, more than eager to rid her of the barrier. In other circumstances, Vi would’ve liked to tease her, to take her time dragging the silk over the milky expanse of her skin, making sure Caitlyn writhed and whined until she was bare and wetter than before.
But after so long with nothing more than a phantom memory, she makes quick, diligent work pulling the garment out of her way. And even doing so, she still indulges, knuckles grazing over brown nipples on the way up, lips and teeth latching onto her clavicle before the garment even meets the floor. Her palms spread and rake over Caitlyn’s bare hips, gripping her arse before needing to pull back, to see as much as feel her.
“Gods Caitlyn,” Vi breathes, hands truly unable to keep still, wanting to touch and feel and savor everything like the first time all over again. And it feels that way, her body achingly familiar and novel at the same time, flushed skin bathed in warm candlelight, eyes darker than sin. No dream has even come close.
The sight of her, bare and tall, fingers digging and gripping Vi’s arms, running over her chest, ignites a deep hunger in her chest, an insatiable desire that builds like a growing storm in her chest, thunder a deep rumble in her lower belly. Vi is a woman truly starved.
“You’re so beautiful. More than I even remembered.” If her voice trembles around the whispered confession, Caitlyn doesn’t tease her for it. It’s true after all. Her memory is a poor contender for the woman who rivals the beauty of the gods.
Her betrothed. Her wife. Hers.
She licks a stripe between her breasts, following the path of pinkening skin that reddens further with Vi’s continued attention, thighs rubbing together with the soft praise kissed and licked against her skin.
Caitlyn shivers, nails dragging over Vi’s arms, digging into her shoulders before bringing Vi back up to meet her lips for a hungry kiss. The moan Caitlyn emits vibrates against her mouth, sending a heavier wave of want through Vi’s core.
She needs to move, needs to surround and be surrounded by her.
Caitlyn gasps when Vi hoists her up, strong hands groping the backs of her thighs. She doesn’t break their kiss as she moves toward the bed, Caitlyn’s legs and arms wrap around her like a vice and her burning wet arousal presses soundly against Vi’s stomach and hells—
“Fuck, Cait,” Vi groans, legs nearly buckling at just how wet she is. Caitlyn hums, legs tightening around her waist until Vi fumbles, knees hitting the mattress with an unpracticed clumsiness, her brain stuttering like she’s never felt a wet cunt before.
The mattress welcomes them with feathered arms and fur-covered softness, their bodies sinking into it when Vi covers her with the hard planes of her own body. She slots her leg between Caitlyn’s, nearly choking to feel her like this again, wet and pliant, legs fanning open in submission. Knowing it’s wholly for Vi sets her own core aflame, her cunt fucking aching with just how much arousal coats her skin, smearing against her leg at the barest touch.
She runs a finger through her, light and brief enough to make sure this is no fevered figment.“Fuck, you’re already so wet,” says Vi, breathless.
Caitlyn blushes under her, eyes fluttering before she turns her head, the pillows a poor mask to the sense of bashfulness Vi’s not seen in her before. She leans down, nipples brushing Caitlyn’s to graze the shell of Caitlyn’s ear with her teeth. “You body didn’t forget me,” she breathes, barely even an awed whisper to herself. She chokes back the wave of hot tears that burn her eyes at the realization.
“It’s been so long— I… I haven’t— It could only be you,” Caitlyn whimpers weakly, head pressing harder into the pillows when Vi grinds against her, arousal spreading further on the muscle there. She grips her chin, guiding Caitlyn to face her again, wanting— needing — to see her eyes. Caitlyn lets her, eyes hooded and vulnerable and hips finally moving, seeking what she’s denied herself all this time.
“I know, I know,” Vi coos, kissing her sweetly. “I’m here now. I’m going to take care of you,” she promises, swallowing Caitlyn’s choked whimper with another open mouthed kiss, tasting the shyness and desperation on Caitlyn’s tongue.
She presses her thigh against wet heat again, holding the swell of Caitlyn’s hips in her wide palms, guiding her in a slow, gyrating rhythm. Caitlyn heaves under her, nails clawing streaks down her back, up her arms, digging into her scalp enough to hurt. Vi grunts, mouthing at her breasts, sucking the pebbled flesh into her mouth, tongue swirling before she leaves indents with her teeth. Caitlyn’s hips stutter against her thigh, her chin tilting up while her jaw slackens with a stuttered moan. Vi leaves violet colored bruises on her chest and she thinks she can taste the rapid beat of Caitlyn’s heart under her teeth and tongue.
She releases her with a wet pop , eying the love shaped blemish she leaves behind, kissing where her teeth weren’t so gentle, an unneeded apology in the wake of what she knows Caitlyn likes. She likes to be marked. Claimed. And Vi wants nothing more than to do just that.
She feels starved. Every kiss and lick and bite she leaves fills her up slowly, and Caitlyn only grows wetter when she sucks bruises along her throat, under her jaw, until Caitlyn whimpers, broken and high pitched, legs shaking in a way Vi remembers– knows –
“You’re close so soon,” Vi gasps, nothing but reverent awe paints her voice.
“Can you blame me?” Caitlyn quips, voice breathy and short. Vi blushes, preening at the way after so long she can still pull pleasure from her like this.
“Not at all.”
Arousal pools and drips down her own thighs, her lower belly a tight knot that hasn’t been unspooled, truly undone, since she last came on Caitlyn’s tongue. Her own fingers were a poor imitation, resulting in only weak, short-lived orgasms that left her aching more than when she’d started.
But now, she could come hard enough to see stars just watching Caitlyn, content with her hips filling Vi’s hands, soaking her thigh and skin covered in the love bites Vi can’t help but make.
“Vi, please, I-I need–”
“Tell me,” Vi encourages, rolling Caitlyn’s hip again, the movement longer and firmer, earning the exact breathy whimper she’s missed so much. “You feel so incredible against me, but I know you need more. Tell me,” she husks, her voice threaded in burning affection, peppering kisses on the crescents of her cheeks.
Caitlyn doesn’t make her wait, taking one of Vi’s hands, fingers curling over her knuckles to drag her the short distance from her hip to where she still grinds against Vi’s thigh. “You want my fingers, beautiful?”
“Yes– please– I just want you close.”
Vi kisses her, slow and sweet so she doesn’t start babbling some poor attempt at poetry for how much she’s missed her. “I can do that.”
Caitlyn whines, desperate and high pitched, hips chasing when Vi pulls her thigh away. She shifts back onto her haunches, spreading Caitlyn open by her shaking thighs, kissing the inside of one, the smell and sight of her so addicting Vi shivers, her mouth watering. Later , she reminds herself. She can devour her later.
She looks up through her lashes, hands still running along her legs, teasing the edges of her pussy to meet darkened eyes. A pretty blush stains her chest and throat, her face so wrecked already; Vi wants to eat her alive.
“Vi, please…” Caitlyn heaves, hands reaching for her with the silent, impatient, come here. She doesn’t need to be told twice. Vi kisses and licks her way up until she covers her, arms caging her in while her hair, damp at the edges, falls like a crimson curtain, bleeding against the raven strands spread against the ivory pillows.
“I’m here, sweetheart. I’m going to give you what you want.” She leans down, kissing her hard while her fingers trace over and down smooth skin, damp with sweat and the wet kisses she’d left behind until she finds the soaked thatch of curls waiting for her, swollen clit throbbing under the first gentle touch. Caitlyn cries out, her name and a curse strung together that Vi knows she’ll never forget.
“I thought of you when I tried to make myself come,” Vi admits, the tips of her fingers dragging up, up, up, circling the throbbing flesh before going back down, spreading her open all over again. “It could never be this , though.”
“ Ahh! ” Her back arches, the simple movement eliciting such a visceral response sends thick waves of wanton heat down Vi’s spine. She rubs her thighs together, her own want pulsing in tandem with the princess’. “ Violet –! I’m- I–”
“Do you want me inside, pretty girl?”
Caitlyn’s mouth falls open, fingers gripping and pulling at Vi as she nods. “I need you to tell me. I need to hear you say it. Please,” she says sweetly, kissing her open mouth, tasting the choked moan when she probes at her entrance, retreating back up again.
“Don’t tease me,” Caitlyn pleads, hips canting to chase Vi’s fingers. She smirks, other hand cupping her jaw, arm caging her when she kisses her again, languid and slow, whimpering when Caitlyn’s teeth nip at her.
“I would never,” she promises, keeping her brow pressed to Caitlyn’s, desperate to breathe her in.
She’s soaked, the sheets stained where she drips. They both moan, wanton and guttural when she dips lower, fingers not meeting even an ounce of resistance until her knuckles are enveloped in so much wet heat, lips parting like the softest flower petals. “Gods you feel so good around me. So perfect for me,” Vi groans against her mouth, so torn with wanting to taste her and wanting to stay close like Caitlyn pleaded. But the thought vanishes when Caitlyn’s nails dig into the back of Vi’s neck, lips seeking until their kisses are more just breath and wet presses, teeth possessive when pulling Vi’s lip.
“All–” she gasps, Vi’s fingers stretching her, filling her until she finds the spot that she swears was made for Vi and Vi alone. “– Mmph –for you, my love.”
Vi keens as the endearment washes over her, heat boiling in her lower belly, blooming like vines up into her chest. Her love. Spirits, what a sap she’s become.
She keeps her touch light, aware of how close she already is, making gentle passes at her clit with her thumb, two fingers still curling against her, rubbing the soft, spongy spot while her walls clench tighter, tighter, tighter–
Caitlyn’s hips lift, needy moans and slick sounds filling the room with every stroke, every thrust a little deeper. Caitlyn’s legs squeeze around her waist, moans growing higher and higher, only muffled where her teeth and lips latch onto Vi’s throat, moving to her shoulder, the skin there already bearing the brunt of her affections. Good, she thinks, hoping they leave marks more permanent than the ink etched there.
Vi pulls back from where her sweat-soaked forehead was shoved in the crook of Caitlyn’s neck, suddenly filled with the need to see, to watch her come undone. The sight of her draws out a low rumbled groan from her throat, her hair like spilled ink against the pillows, lips pink and swollen, skin flushed down to chest– she wants the image ingrained into the fiber of her own making. She bites her lip, fingers still working to fill her while Vi clenches around nothing, slick dripping between her own legs in a mess.
She feels so dizzy with want, wild and raw with the pent up everything that she never thought she would get to act on again. But Caitlyn’s here, writhing and crying Vi’s name so loudly the gods themselves can probably hear. She knows they’d be jealous of the way Caitlyn seems to pray to her more than she ever has to them.
“You can come, my pretty girl,” Vi husks, knowing her betrothed is holding back, clinging to her resolve to last. She quickens her movements, hips grinding down against the back of her hand, earning a high pitched gasp, proving her point with the way her walls tighten, fluttering with a promise.
“But it’s s-so soon— ahh— Violet…”
Vi chuckles warmly, leaving more open mouth kisses along the column of her throat, tasting the sweat and traces of perfume, never going too far from where Caitlyn silently begs for her lips, kissing her with a promise of her own. “We have all the time in the world. I’ll be here afterwards to give you another.” A kiss, hard and ruining. “And another.” A bite just under her jaw. “And another...”
Caitlyn squeezes her eyes shut, choking on a sob, as if the words were all she needed to hear. Vi stops thrusting, simply curling into her instead, thumb pushing the hood of her clit back to rub slow, lazy circles until she feels her wrist ache.
“Look at me,” Vi commands softly, kissing her chin, her jaw, her lips– once. Twice. Long lashes flutter before her lids peel open, slits of midnight blue reflecting the sheer want Vi feels like an iron brand, heat licking up her spine like a curl of dragonfire.
When she comes, Vi thinks she falls in love all over again. Wetness floods her palm, heat pulses around her fingertips so tightly Vi has to still altogether save for the gentle strokes against that pulsing spot. She kisses soft praises into her skin, tastes her name on Caitlyn’s tongue over and over and over until she’s boneless against the sheets, soft and pliant and Vi’s .
She’s not been the possessive type before. Not really. But when she pulls her fingers out, slow and only a hint of teasing when she runs over her clit again, she knows there was never a chance she would’ve survived seeing Caitlyn in the arms of another. She holds Caitlyn’s eye when she brings her fingers to her mouth, sucking them until she feels her own hips squirm, wanting to clean the mess she’s made.
The thought doesn’t last more than a labored breath, Caitlyn pulling her down for a kiss so sweet it makes her ache, reminding her of the insistent throbbing between her legs. Caitlyn seems to pick up on it, smirking against her mouth to whisper:
“Will you still let me have you?”
Vi doesn’t have the sense of mind to deny her, not that she wants to. For as much as she worships and adores touching her princess, she loves to be touched and held too.
They bring each other joy in pleasing the other, and she nods frantically, her breath hitching when Caitlyn’s fingers ghost over the planes of her stomach, following the trail of hair from her bellybutton to where she aches, her inner thighs a wanton mess as they spread ever so slightly. Caitlyn hums her approval, her other hand running up the planes of her back, curling around the nape of her neck as she sighs contentedly, “Your body remembers me too.”
Vi’s arm buckles where it sinks into the mattress beside Caitlyn’s head. “Of course I do,” she murmurs, a full body shiver raking her body when she passes through her wet lips, the coiled knot in her lower belly so taut– “Fuck, Cait, it won’t take much…”
“Let me taste you, then,” Caitlyn commands, voice still heaved and panting. But it’s no less powerful, no less convincing. Vi would cut her own heart out at this point if Caitlyn asked her to.
She makes to roll on her back, to spread herself for her princess when Caitlyn’s ankles lock at her lower back, keeping her still. Vi looks down at her, incredulous and playful. Blue eyes still eclipsed with want gaze up at her, and her mouth, kiss swollen and bruised, pulls into a smirk that whispers mischief.
“How do you want me then?”
Caitlyn doesn’t answer at first, instead claiming her mouth in a heated kiss, hands running up her sides, squeezing her hips.
Vi huffs when Caitlyn pulls her up, insistent and fuck – her lips latch around her sensitive nipples, knowingly softer than Vi was with hers, knowing she needs a lighter touch, and Vi is all the more undone for it. She kisses the scars that mar her abdomen, new and old alike, until Vi’s knees sink into the feathered mattress, cunt hovering where Caitlyn’s mouth waits for her, the tip of her nose brushing through her.
Vi curses at the feeling, so wound up that her thighs quake around Caitlyn’s head, breath seizing in her lungs at Caitlyn’s gentle pull, palms running up and down her legs, caressing the span of her ribs, all of it urging her to lower herself. “Please,” she begs, breath brushing her clit and gods—
At the first delicate swipe of her tongue through her folds, she knows this will be her end.
She knows her so profoundly, knows how to make Vi stutter, how to tease her entrance with the tip of her tongue before swirling around her clit. And hells, her mouth is so warm and soft and Vi never stands a chance to last longer when she sucks her clit between her lips, tongue persistent and gentle all at once. It’s as if no time has passed at all.
It’s all Vi can do to breathe, to not crush her future wife when one of Caitlyn’s hands comes up to cup her breast, thumb soft when she strokes the stiff peak.“Cait…” she whines, hand meeting Caitlyn’s on her chest, squeezing Cait’s fingers wrapped around her own breast until just the hint of pain makes her legs tremble harder. She grips Caitlyn’s hair at her crown, the edge a glaring light just in front of her.
“I’m– hng– Cait…I’m there,” she keens, Caitlyn’s tongue working long, slow licks between her lips, circling her clit before sucking it back into her mouth.
Caitlyn hums, brow furrowed as she works, and the sound sends a lightning strike to her core. Vi’s mouth falls open as her head tilts back, her hips unable to keep still, riding Caitlyn’s tongue.
She feels her insides unravel, the bowstring finally, blessedly snapping at the center when Caitlyn sucks a little harder, hands roaming her body, memorizing and refamiliarizing with reverent squeezes and long gropes.
Her orgasm is a slow, drawn out thing, a tidal wave of pleasure that sends Vi’s other arm out to slap against the dark oak headboard, the frame the only thing keeping her from falling over. She hears herself shout, can feel words babbling out of her mouth, but she can’t hear them, the pounding of her own heart thunderous in her ears.
She looks down, heart stuttering in her chest at the sight of blue eyes staring up at her, soft and almost disbelieving. Vi lifts herself, embers already threatening to catch flame at the way Caitlyn’s nose and chin are covered in her, lips slick and dripping enough that Vi already feels worked up again when she kisses her, cleaning the mess with her tongue.
The night goes on like this. Each of them pulling pleasure from the other until they’re finally well and truly boneless, dawn having yet to curl her fingers over the sky by the time they can only muster slow, languid kisses.
The steady sound of Caitlyn’s heart under ear almost lulls her into a warm hazy sleep sometime later, the sun just kissing the edges of the sky. She lies between Caitlyn’s legs, head cushioned on the swell of her chest while Caitlyn runs featherlight patterns along the trail of ink and scars on her back. The duvet is a heap of fur on the floor, the sheets dampened and ruined under them. She knows the maids will raise their brow when they come to change the bedding, whispers that soon will the kitchens and the halls, somehow finding their way back down the Queen’s Road–
Vi inhales, stopping the thoughts from spiraling as the scent of lavender and sex wash over her like a balm. She lets her smile, turning her head to kiss the spot above the princess’ heart. It’ll take getting used to. That she won’t have to hide her affections for fear of banishment or execution. As if reading her thoughts, Caitlyn’s fingers card through her sweat-soaked hair, lips pressed into her crown before revealing–
“I never stopped loving you, either Violet.”
Vi starts, breath faltering as the confession lands like a caress.
It dawns on her what she’d said in her orgasmic haze, heat crawling up her cheeks. She’d wanted to utter those words again differently, but can’t find it in herself to regret the nature of their coming. She’d meant it the same then as she does now and the years yawning out behind and ahead of them. She doesn’t think she could stop loving her if she tried.
She doesn’t even register that she says that sentiment aloud, her mind fogged and body sated. But Caitlyn holds her tighter, heart stuttering under Vi’s ear.
They speak of their time apart in hushed whispers. The screaming matches and official petitions leveled to make their union possible. The months Caitlyn spent on Nyra just to prove a point to her mother that she either would wed a woman or disinherit herself.
Vi chuckles at that, affection blooming like lilies in her chest, petals wide and long. The line of suitors wearing gowns waiting for her when she returned only added to her ire, although she had to meet her mother on some common ground, she tells her. Vi’s jaw clenches, unwilling to meet Caitlyn’s eyes when she regales this. She has no right to feel jealous– not now. Not with Caitlyn in her arms or her cum still an aftertaste on her tongue.
Soft thumbs stroke the tightened muscle of her jaw, working out the wordless feeling anyways. Vi kisses her palm, exhaling long and slow as she continues, Vi following with her own heartache, of the battles she swears she only lived through for the hope she’d end up here. Caitlyn blushes a deep scarlet, lip caught between her teeth before Vi pulls it free, sucking it into her own mouth.
Vi can’t stop the stray tears that come with Caitlyn’s telling of just how she managed to circumvent a tradition older than the throne itself.
“Her only requirement was that I marry a noble house. She nor the law had anything to say about how long the Lord or Lady held a seat.”
Vi laughs, the sound wet and choked, the kisses that follow deep and salty. “You’re too clever for your own good,” Vi huffs, her brow pressing against Caitlyn’s.
“Hmm. That’s a kind way to call me stubborn, my love.”
Vi huffs a shaky laugh, kissing her soundly before burying her face in the crook of Caitlyn’s neck.
“Can I ask you something?” Vi asks after a few heartbeats.
Caitlyn’s fingers still for a moment in her hair, but she hums, the heel of her foot running up Vi’s calf, encouraging her to speak.
She swallows, eyes closing as she finally asks, “Why didn’t you send for me?”
Caitlyn’s pulse quickens against Vi’s mouth, her breath hitching, and Vi wants to swallow the question back down, regret already forming a lump in her throat. But then Caitlyn tugs at her hair, forcing her to meet her gaze.
Vi can’t contend with what she finds. Hurt and confusion mirrored back to her, eyes flickering with something incredulous. “Violet, I… I did send for you. I wrote to you. For so long and I just thought when they went unanswered–”
“Unasnwered?”
“Yes?” Caitlyn says, breath coming out short, eyes searching for the lie in Vi’s eyes. But she won’t find it. “I started keeping them after so long and hoped I could perhaps show you when you returned and…” she trails off, sitting up so Vi has to shift to the side.
Caitlyn stands from the bed, taking quick, long strides to her trunk, rummaging until she returns a bound stack of parchment. Vi sits amongst the rumpled sheets, vision watering when she takes them from Caitlyn’s hands, fingers running over the ink.
The mattress dips where Caitlyn sits close to her, body molding to Vi’s side. Vi sucks in a breath, setting the stack down to look at her, relief and grief warring like a wild storm in her chest. “Cait I…I wrote to you, too.”
“What? I never–”
“I sent so many,” Vi says weakly, staring down at her own hands. She’s poured her soul into some of them, her love and desire all in messy scrawl. “I looked to the sky so often, hoping you… well I think after a while I thought you just didn’t feel the same anymore.” Vi feels blue eyes watching her, heat spreading across her cheeks, some of her hurt still lingering like scars on her skin. She hates the hot tear that slides down her nose, landing on her curled fist.
Caitlyn breathes next to her, not speaking long enough Vi begins to fidget, thumb pressing hard into her own palm. Caitlyn places her hand on Vi’s, squeezing.
“Violet, my love, will you look at me?”
She does, biting the inside of her cheek.
Caitlyn stares, lips parted and eyes glassy as takes Vi’s face in her palms before kissing her, tender at first, but soon it becomes something needy and Vi can taste the unrestrained longing. When they part, panting like they haven’t been so entangled all night, her eyes are hard, determined in a way that Vi knows should elicit fear. “Someone will be meeting their end with dragonfire when we return.”
Vi blinks at her, hands coming to circle her wrists, kissing her palm for her to continue.“I believe we’ve both been played for fools,” she says ruefully, thumbs rubbing soothing tracks along her cheeks, wiping the stray tears Vi can’t seem to stop. “And I plan to root them out.”
That makes the breath still in her lungs. She blinks a few times, the words catching up to her.
“You think someone intercepted them,” Vi says finally. Anger cuts at her insides, no face in particular coming to mind but she knows her betrothed won’t allow this snake to sleep and she takes comfort in that. Caitlyn nods, eyes searching Vi’s face.
“For all the good it’s done them,” she says. “They merely prolonged the inevitable. Crown or no, treason will be met with my hand.”
Vi blushes again, pulling Caitlyn into her lap, burying her face in Caitlyn’s hair, overwhelmed with affection and need all over again. “Thank you,” she breathes out, clutching her lover— her future wife — like a lifeline.
Caitlyn settles in her arms, legs straddling her and arms wrapped around her neck, keeping them flush together. “Whatever for?” she asks, almost shyly.
Vi kisses her temple, trailing down to her shoulder, her neck, pulling her back to kiss her lips. “For loving me so fiercely.”
When they finally sleep, it’s heavy and weighted in layers of warmth and long limbs. They sleep well past sunrise, ignoring the knocks on their chamber door— it’s Vi’s bloody castle now after all. She’ll sleep and love her betrothed as she pleases.
And something finally settles in her chest, something with roots and petals that spreads out wider than Nyra’s wings. They’ll have the realm to face outside, expectations she’s not prepared to shoulder. But for the first time in her life, she isn’t carrying them alone.
Notes:
Thank you guys so much for reading! I knew at some point I wanted to add to this and it was a ton of fun to come back to! I will say *lowers voice to a whisper* I have written their wedding and a very special st*** scene that will be following this (potentially as a new work instead of another chapter so I can add to the caitvi fic list but I'm not sure yet so I'll leave the chapter count as is for now).
As always, I love and adore your feedback to feel free to yell at me abt the angst or whatever else :)