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2026-04-24
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2026-06-13
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Wine, Blood, and Dragonfire

Summary:

A second marriage is not always a second chance.

For Alerie Redwyne, it is duty dressed in silk. For Prince Maekar Targaryen, it is another burden laid upon old grief. Neither comes to the marriage willingly, and neither expects comfort from the other.

But the dead do not loosen their hold easily, and the living are not always wise enough to keep their distance.

Notes:

Hey!
So, I hope you enjoy, basically. :D

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Alerie had always believed her life would be a quiet one. Not grand, nor storied, nothing sung of by minstrels or set down in the histories, but steady. At least. There had been comfort in that once, in the thought that a future could be known before it arrived, even if it held little wonder. A modest life did not seem so poor a thing to wish for, not to a girl who had grown up watching men speak of power as though it were a harvest to be gathered and stored against winter.

When she allowed herself to dream, she dreamed simply. A husband kind enough to be gentle with her, and wise enough not to mistake ambition for worth. A man content with his lands, his hall, his children, and the woman placed beside him. A household where laughter came more easily than calculation, where sons and daughters might grow without learning too early that every smile could hide a bargain. She had imagined growing old in such a place, far from crowns and councils, far from the quarrels of lords who dressed greed in the language of duty and left blood behind them in the name of honor.

It had seemed a humble wish.

But a lady may dream what she likes, and no more than that. Least of all the only daughter of the Lord of the Arbor.

Lord Alester Redwyne had never been a man content to let the world arrange itself without his hand upon it. He was careful where other men were bold, patient where they were hungry, ever weighing alliance against advantage with the calm precision of a merchant judging coin. His was not the sort of ambition that shouted from battlements or rode beneath bright banners. It moved quietly, beneath courtesy and sealed letters, beneath cups shared at feast and words spoken as if in passing.

He spoke often of her future, though seldom as though it belonged to her. Hightower, perhaps, if fortune proved generous. Tyrell, if the gods were feeling absurdly kind. Failing those, there were lesser yet still useful houses—Blackbar, Peake, names offered not with warmth, but with consideration, as though he were turning stones in his palm and judging which might best serve his foundations. To Alester, marriage was not the joining of two lives. It was the setting of a piece upon the board, and if the hand was steady enough, one small piece might alter the shape of the whole game.

Alerie had known this, even then. She had been raised beneath his roof, after all, and had learned early to hear the meaning beneath his silences. Still, knowing a thing did not make it easier to bear. There was a difference between understanding that one was valuable and realizing one was being saved for the proper price.

And when opportunity showed itself, Lord Alester Redwyne did not let it pass him by.

His name had been Leyton Tarly, a nephew to the lord of Horn Hill, and not the sort of match her father would have chosen had all the great houses of the Reach been laid open before him. Yet Leyton was well-born, well-mannered, and tied to an old and honorable house, which made him useful enough to consider. Not splendid, not the sort to lift House Redwyne above its station in a single stroke, but sound. Respectable. Safe. 

“Good enough,” he had called it once, in that measured way of his.

For Alerie, it had been more than that. Or so she had wanted to believe.

Leyton had been gentle where other boys were proud, with an easy smile and a way of speaking that asked little and offered comfort without effort. She had not named it love then, not truly, though she tried at times to dress it in love’s colors. There had been ease in his company, and a quiet pleasure in finding him across a room. She liked the way he listened, the way silence did not sharpen between them, the way the future seemed less like something to be endured when he stood within it. Perhaps it was only kindness mistaken for something deeper by a girl who had been taught to expect so little, yet even now Alerie could not bring herself to scorn it. There were worse foundations upon which to build a life.

And still, Alerie believed there would be time. Time for affection to deepen into certainty. Time for their household to fill with noise and small feet. Time for her father’s disappointment to fade into something less watchful. Time for the quiet life she had accepted to become the life she chose.

She was young enough still to think time a thing generously given.

Until it was not.

The illness came without warning. One morning Leyton woke feverish and dull-eyed, complaining of a chill no fire could drive out of him. By nightfall, the maester’s calm had begun to wear thin. What had seemed a passing sickness tightened its grip with cruel haste. His skin burned beneath her hand, his sleep grew troubled, and each time he woke he seemed to have returned from farther away than before.

They bled him, cooled him, dosed him with bitter draughts that left the chamber smelling of herbs, vinegar, and fear. Servants moved in and out with basins and fresh linen, speaking softly, as though lowered voices might keep death from hearing its own name. Alerie sat beside him through it all, watching the man who had been her husband for less than a year become smaller within the bed, his hand light in hers, his voice fading until even her name cost him effort.

Leyton died before their first year of marriage had run its course.

And just as quickly as it had been made, her life unraveled, leaving Alerie Redwyne a widow once more, young, unproven, and without an heir.

Her father received her back at the Arbor with all the courtesy, and none of the tenderness she might once have hoped for. He did not scold her. He did not speak of disappointment, of squandered hopes, or of the heir that had never quickened in her belly. He spoke instead of rest, of time, of grief having its proper season, and allowed her the black gowns, the quiet chambers, the lowered voices that came with widowhood.

But Alerie knew her father’s silences.

Lord Alester Redwyne did not brood; he calculated. Even as he allowed his daughter her mourning, his thoughts had already begun to move beyond it, measuring what remained and what might yet be made of what had been lost.

Her father had no intention of letting her second chance pass unused.

He had long sought a way to raise House Redwyne beyond the place it had been given. The Arbor was rich, richer than many houses with prouder names, but gold did not always command where blood and banners did. Alester knew that well. Wealth could open doors, but influence decided who was invited to remain within.

He had not yet found the proper door when the realm, as it so often did, made one from grief.

Word came from court that Prince Maekar Targaryen’s wife was dead.

For most, it was a sorrow to be spoken of softly. For some, a reminder that even dragons were not spared the common cruelties of the world. For Lord Redwyne, it became something else—not opportunity at once, not openly, but the faint shape of one.

Two years passed before anything came of it. Alester was too careful a man to grasp too soon. He wrote to King’s Landing with measured courtesy, never so often as to seem presumptuous, yet often enough that his name would not be forgotten. Old friendships were warmed again, old obligations gently remembered. In the Reach, too, certain words began to travel in the proper rooms: Redwyne loyalty, Redwyne ships, Redwyne gold, the wisdom of drawing the Arbor closer to the crown. 

Alerie saw enough to understand, though no one troubled to explain it to her. She saw the sealed letters, the private visitors, the conversations that stilled when she entered. She heard her name spoken and then swallowed. Once she had been Leyton Tarly’s widow, returned to her father’s keeping with no child and no settled place. Slowly, almost quietly, she became something else: a possibility to be weighed, a promise to be offered, a name to be placed where it might serve.

By the end of that year, House Redwyne had made itself difficult to overlook. Not powerful in the manner of Tyrell or Hightower, not feared, not beloved, but present. Useful. Waiting.

And so, when the opening came at last, it did not feel like sudden fortune.

It felt like the end of a road her father had been building long before she knew she was walking it.

Before Alerie had fully found her footing within it, she was already upon the sea.

The Arbor slipped from her slowly, its green fading into distance while the sails above her filled with wind and purpose. The voyage was neither harsh nor gentle, but something in between—days of steady motion, the groan of timber, the creak of rope, the salt air settling into her skin and hair until it seemed a part of her. The wind worried at her often, loosening the soft waves so they would not lie as they had been set, lifting strands the color of pale copper and sun-touched gold, bright in places and softer in others, as though the light could not quite decide what it found there.

Alerie kept mostly to herself. She stood often at the rail, watching the endless rise and fall of the sea, letting its steady rhythm quiet her thoughts when they grew too loud to bear. The days passed in that fashion, one folding into the next, until even time itself seemed to move with the same slow certainty as the water beneath them. King’s Landing remained distant in her mind, not yet real, not yet something that could reach out and lay claim to her. It was easier, she had found, to think of it that way.

On the last evening before they made harbor, she stood there longer than usual. The sky had begun to darken at the edges, blue deepening slowly into grey, while the water below took on the color of beaten steel. The wind had grown cooler, and it pressed at her cloak as though urging her below, but still she remained, one hand resting upon the rail, her gaze fixed upon the line where sea and sky met.

“Are you afraid, my lady?”

The voice came softly behind her. Marella. Alerie had not heard her approach over the groan of timber and sail.

“I do not know,” she said after a time, her eyes still upon the darkening blue. “I find I am no longer certain what I ought to feel.”

Marella stepped beside her then, one hand resting upon the rail. She did not look at Alerie immediately, but out over the water, as though the answer might be found there if one stared long enough.

“Your lord father has labored long for this,” she said carefully. “He would not have done so without cause. It is a great match, my lady. You may yet find yourself well pleased in it.”

Alerie let out the faintest breath at that, something softer than a sigh. She turned her head at last, looking at the girl beside her, though her expression gave little away.

“And so will he,” she said.

There was no bitterness in it, but neither was there comfort.

Marella’s lips pressed into a thin line, as though she might have said more had she dared it. In the end, she only dipped her head slightly, her voice gentler when she spoke again.

“You should rest, my lady. We make harbor on the morrow.”

Alerie lingered a moment longer, the sea stretching vast and indifferent before her. Somewhere above, the sails snapped once in the wind, sharp as a command. Then, without another word, she turned from the water and followed.

They were met at the docks and ushered into a waiting carriage with little ceremony. Servants moved quickly about them, gathering cloaks and trunks, while her father spoke a few quiet words to the men sent to receive them. Alerie hardly heard any of it. Only when the carriage door had been shut and the wheels had begun to turn did she lift her gaze and look out through the small latticed window at her side.

The harbor stayed with them for a little while. Masts rose and swayed like a bare forest in the wind, ropes creaking overhead, sails snapping where they had not yet been furled. Gulls circled and cried above the quays while men shouted across the decks below, their voices roughened by salt and labor. The scent of the sea should have comforted her, sharp and familiar as it was, yet here it came fouled by other things—tar, sweat, old wood, and fish left too long beneath the sun. The rot of it clung thickly to the air, mingling with the press of bodies and cargo until Alerie felt her stomach turn.

The harbor fell away sooner than she expected, and the streets closed in almost at once. After weeks upon open water, the nearness of everything struck her with quiet force. The buildings leaned above them, tall and narrow, their upper stories seeming to reach toward one another across the road as though conspiring to shut out the sky. Strips of dyed cloth hung from windows and lines overhead, flashes of red, yellow, and blue glimpsed only for a breath before the carriage lurched onward. There was color everywhere, yet none of it seemed clean.

The road beneath them was uneven, worn down by years of wheels and hooves, and the carriage rattled over the stones without mercy. Each jolt forced Alerie to brace one hand against the seat, her fingers tightening whenever the wheels struck a rut or broken place in the street. Her father sat opposite her, composed as ever, as though he had expected the city to shake and stink and shout, and found no reason to be troubled by it. She envied him that stillness, though she could not share it. The walls of the carriage seemed to draw closer with every turn, the air within growing warmer, heavier, harder to breathe.

Sound reached her more easily than sight. King’s Landing announced itself in fragments: the grind of carts, the clatter of horses’ hooves, the sharp call of hawkers, the sudden bark of laughter from some unseen doorway. Voices rose and tangled together until they became one restless thing, argument and trade and gossip all woven into a single roar. Somewhere nearby, steel rang against steel, then vanished beneath the cry of a child and the curse of a driver whose cart had been forced aside.

The Arbor had never been this loud.

There, even at harvest, the noise had room to scatter. Wind moved through vines, waves struck the shore, men called to one another across clean air. Here, every sound seemed trapped between stone and timber, pressed close with the smoke, the stink, and the heat of too many lives crowded together.

Alerie watched what she could as the carriage bore them upward. A narrow alley slid past, dark and wet despite the daylight. A woman with a basket on her hip turned her face away from the wheels. A barefoot boy darted across the road so near the horses that Alerie’s breath caught, though no one outside seemed to notice. Faces appeared and vanished just as swiftly; most turned to their own concerns, some lifting only long enough to mark the passing carriage before looking away again.

It was not that the city was ugly, not wholly. There was life in it, more life than she had ever seen gathered in one place, and a kind of fierce, careless force. But it did not welcome her. It swallowed. It pressed. It carried her onward whether she wished to go or not, up through the noise and the stink and the crowded streets, toward the hill where the Red Keep waited above them all.

And then, little by little, the city began to change.

The streets widened first, so slightly that Alerie noticed it more in the easing of her breath than by sight. The press of bodies thinned, the shouting fell back into a duller murmur, and the buildings no longer leaned so heavily over the road. The air was still thick, still touched by smoke and damp stone, but the worst of the harbor’s rot had been left below, along with the crush of the lower streets.

The carriage climbed.

She felt it before she saw it, in the steadier pull of the horses and the more even turning of the wheels. The stones beneath them grew smoother, better kept, less broken by years of carts and mud. Guards appeared now where before there had been hawkers and beggars, men in cloaks and mail standing at gates and corners, their faces unreadable as the carriage passed. The city did not vanish, not truly; its noise still rose from below, but here it seemed farther away, as though held at the bottom of the hill by walls, rank, and will.

Alerie leaned closer to the small window, her gaze lingering now where before it had only passed.

The Red Keep did not come into view all at once, but in pieces. First the pale curve of a tower beyond a wall, then the dark slash of battlements against the sky, then another tower rising higher still, until at last the whole of it stood before her, vast and unmoving. It rose from the hill as though hewn from the very rock beneath it, its pale stone catching what little light the day would grant and holding it without warmth.

For a moment, Alerie could only stare.

There was nothing welcoming in it. That was her first thought. The Red Keep did not invite, nor soften itself for those who came beneath its shadow. Even from below, there was something final in its presence, as though it had endured too many kings, too many wars, too many vows spoken and broken within its walls to trouble itself.

And Alerie, watching from within the carriage, could not see herself within it.

She scarcely noticed when the carriage slowed, nor when the wheels ceased their turning altogether. Only the sound of a man’s voice beyond the door drew her back to herself, announcing her father’s name first, clear and formal, and then her own. The words were still being spoken when the door was opened, letting in a rush of cooler air and the hollow echo of the yard beyond.

For a moment, she found herself looking at her father instead of the world beyond, faintly surprised to see that he was already watching her.

“Come,” he said.

His voice was low and even. There was a gentleness to it, but it did not soften the command beneath.

“They are expecting us. You will need to change.”

Alerie drew in a slow breath, as though the air within the carriage had grown heavier with the knowledge of what lay beyond it, and after a heartbeat longer she moved.

Her father was the first to step down, and she followed close behind him, taking his hand as she descended from the carriage and set her feet upon the stone.

Her father thanked the man, and a moment later the steward withdrew, leaving them with Marella and the quiet of the room. The door closed behind him with a soft, final sound.

Lord Alester remained standing for a moment longer, as though measuring the chamber before deciding what to make of it. He took in the carved chairs, the heavy bed, the narrow windows, the table set with a flagon of wine and a bowl of late fruit, all with the same silent consideration he gave to most things, as though already weighing their use.

Then he turned back to her.

“The king and queen will receive us this evening,” he said quietly. “We are to sup with them, and with the princes.”

His voice carried no urgency, only certainty, as though the matter had been settled long before she had ever crossed the threshold. Perhaps it had. So much of her life seemed to have been arranged in rooms where she had not been present.

“Marella,” he said then, without looking away from Alerie at first. “See that my daughter presents herself as she ought.”

The maid dipped her head at once. “Yes, my lord.”

Marella had already begun to move through the chamber, quick and quiet, taking stock of trunks, basins, towels, and gowns with the practiced eye of one who understood that preparation was its own kind of armor.

Her father stepped closer to Alerie than.

He lifted his hand and took her chin gently between his fingers, guiding her face upward. His touch was not unkind, yet there was something in it that made her feel very still, like a thing being inspected before it was set before important eyes. He studied her in silence for a long moment: her skin, the faint scatter of freckles across her cheeks, the line of her nose, the shape of her brows. Last of all, his gaze settled upon her eyes.

Those eyes, he had told her countless times, were her mother’s.

When he spoke again, his tone had softened, though only slightly. “Wear something blue,” he said. “It will suit your eyes.”

Alerie did not answer. She only held herself steady beneath his gaze, as she had been taught.

Then, before another word could pass between them, Lord Alester released her chin, turned upon his heel, and left them there.

Alerie remained where her father had left her. It felt fitting, in its own way, for lately she had begun to feel less like a person moving of her own accord and more like something placed and replaced at another’s will. Dressed when it pleased others, spoken for when it suited them, turned this way and that as though she were no more than a thing to be arranged.

“My lady,” Marella called gently, breaking into the thought before it could root too deeply. “Shall I have a bath drawn?”

Alerie turned at last, offered a small nod, and allowed herself to be guided.

Marella, for all her chatter, knew better than to ask difficult questions. She spoke instead of smaller things: the voyage, the city, the strange turn of the weather. Alerie answered little, but let the sound of her voice fill the chamber all the same. It was easier that way, to have words moving about her without needing to hold any of them.

For a time, it helped. By the time the bath had been taken and warmth had returned to her skin, the tightness in her chest had eased, though it had not truly gone. Still, it was something like relief.

She sat afterward at the dressing table with a towel loose about her shoulders, working a comb carefully through her damp hair, drawing out the last of the salt and wind of the voyage in slow, patient strokes. In the mirror, she watched as Marella turned again to the chests and folded garments, searching with quiet purpose until at last she drew out a gown of deep turquoise.

The maid held it up so that it caught what little light the narrow windows allowed, the fabric shifting softly in her hands.

Something in Alerie stilled at the sight of it.

It had once belonged to her mother.

Fitted for Alerie years ago and altered as she grew, the gown still seemed to bear the memory of its first making. The color was unmistakable—turquoise like the waters of the Arbor when storm clouds gathered overhead, darkened by shadow yet bright where the light broke through. Sea and sky both lived in it.

“Would this do, my lady?” Marella asked, watching her with a small, knowing smile. She understood well enough what such a choice meant.

“It is perfect,” Alerie whispered.

Marella rose from where she had knelt and came to stand behind her, placing her hands gently upon Alerie’s bare shoulders.

“Then let us braid your hair,” she said softly, “and see you properly dressed.”

By the time they were finished, the woman reflected back at Alerie from the mirror seemed almost unfamiliar to her. She looked composed, carefully arranged, made to appear every bit the bride of a prince her father had labored so long to make of her. The turquoise gown suited her too well for comfort, the color drawing warmth from her skin and depth from her eyes, as though it had been chosen not merely to adorn her, but to ensure she would be seen.

Marella had braided her hair with practiced care, weaving it back in intricate turns while leaving enough of its natural golden-red loose to soften the work, the freed strands catching the light like late autumn sun. The jewels had been chosen by her father himself, each piece fine enough to mark her place without overwhelming her: a small gleam at her throat, a shimmer at her ears, gold and pale stones at her wrists. They caught the light whenever she moved, subtle but deliberate, like every other part of her.

It was, she thought distantly, a careful sort of presentation. Not unlike something set out to be admired, measured, and judged. Not wholly her own, though made to seem as if it were.

A knock came at the door, sharp enough to cut through the quiet, and Alerie started before she could stop herself. Marella moved quickly, already crossing the chamber to answer it. A few low words passed between her and the servant beyond, too soft for Alerie to make out, and then the door closed again, shutting away the corridor and whatever waited beyond it.

Marella turned back at once.

“My lady,” she said, dipping her head as she approached. “Your father has sent word. You are expected.”

Only then did Alerie realize she had been holding her breath. It left her slowly, though it did little to ease the tightness beneath her ribs. The chamber seemed to grow still around her, as though the walls themselves had been waiting for that summons.

She looked once more at the woman in the mirror, at the gown, the jewels, the careful braids, the face made calm by force of will. Then she rose.

“Let us go, then,” she said.