Darkheart

Relief washed over her at those words. Vira caught his hand tightly and kissed him fiercely. "Yes, it is ours and ours alone," she said, meeting his red eye with a steady, determined look of her own. "Don't worry, we have time. Aegon and Rhaena must marry first, and then we must see if they even produce a child."

I have never been introduced to a dead girl before. But it had little effect on Vira's conscience. Her mind was wrapped around her own troubles, the shadows that plagued her happiness with Maekar. It was beginning to become clear to her that the King needed to die, and yet even cold-hearted, ruthless Vira shied at the prospect. Though she bore no love for the King, he was her brother, and it was an act so daring, so dangerous, and so difficult that after a moment she merely put the idea aside. Time enough for that later.

"We'll think about this," she said heavily, rising to her feet with his help. "One problem at a time." Starting with Rhaena, apparently. "Lead the way, my darling one. I would meet my new friend."

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OOC: After their meeting with Visenya, which we are still RPing, and presumably before any threesome sexytimes commence. If that does happen in the Visenya thread, Vira and Maekar can excuse themselves from that thread to have this conversation, and then come back later. For now we can be vague about the Visenya RP.

After talking to Visenya, Vira pulled Maekar into a nearby room and sat on his lap, kissing him sweetly and nestling close. "We have much to consider before the three of us fly back for these weddings," she said. "I am worried about the King. He will claim my first night, I think, and he will summon me to his chambers to be - to be intimate." Vira flushed. "I don't want to do it Maekar - but I am frightened! I wish I could stay here in Darkheart and never, ever, ever go back, so I could hide from the King's eye." And be near you, she thought. So this can be home as it is Visenya's. But she would not say that. As possessive as Vira was of Maekar, she did not particularly wish to cause Visenya pain, and break the fragile peace they had all established.

Vira loved nestling in his arms. She loved how he smelled and how his arms felt around her, and felt like she was at home.

"Do you really think he would be so cruel?" asked Vira, who had no knowledge of what had happened to Elseyris. She cuddled closer, her arms around him, enjoying the light trail of his fingers on her arm. "Couldn't you claim me as your official mistress? I heard they have things like that in Dorne."

Vira's hands balled into fists. "What a tyrant he is," she said. "Over you, over me, over Visenya and Aegon and Rhaena and Elseyris and even that Rhaegar. How long will he hold sway over us like this, ruining our lives and loves and families? Till he dies at the ripe old age of eighty?"

"The King is stifling you in every way," Vira said. "As a husband, as a father, and as a leader. You'll never become the man you were meant to become while he rules and lives. You'll forever be in his shadow, never living up to your vision of yourself. Ruling a keep far below your potential, married to a woman who is beneath you in every way, watching another man raise your son as his own. What a poor mummer's act of a life that is," she said bitterly. It was not clear if she was referring to Rhaena or Visenya when she said "a woman who is beneath you in every way".

Vira's eyes dimmed with emotion. She pulled him close as his own embrace tightened, and gave him a hard, long kiss that would leave his lips numb. "I don't deserve you," she said in a choked voice. "I adore you."

Vira sat for a while, gazing at him in tenderness as she thought. She could not believe the extent of his love for her, that he selflessly wanted her to be happy no matter what, even if it was not with him, and that he would break all his vows to ensure it. How often did one come across such a man, and be lucky enough to be loved by him, and to bear his sons? It made Vira feel warm with love and happiness - and it brought her to a decision. She could not let him do everything for her, and she wanted to protect him. She could not ask the man she loved to kill his own father.

But could she do it? Vira struggled a little at the thought herself. She hated Maegor for tearing her apart from Maekar, yet at the same time felt a certain revulsion at the idea of killing the King, who had been friendly enough in private, and was her brother besides. But the stakes were rising too high now, and she had to make a choice. Would they always live passively, torn apart from each other, content to live in resentful peace as long as they had money and status in their respective arranged marriages? Her old friends would have told Vira that she was lucky. She had a powerful dragon, she was about to be given away in marriage to a trueborn Targaryen, she had a child whom the King himself would claim as his bastard, she could become the King's favored mistress if she wanted to, and she had a beautiful city manse to call her home - why should she hunger for love, after all that? The old Vira would not have understood the emotions that raged in her heart now.

But learning to love Maekar had opened Vira up to a side of herself that she had not known existed. Her love for Maekar fulfilled her in a way her ambitions never had, and it was the only power that could heal her pain and grief about her family. She could not imagine life apart from him. She wanted a life with her son and her love, and she did not want to wait until she was fifty years old to get it. And while once Vira had been unabashed at the idea of taking any man she fancied to her bed, now the idea of being touched by anybody except Maekar made her recoil. For the sake of Maekar, and their baby, Vira felt she could do anything. If she did not fight for her family, she did not deserve to have one.

"I can do it," she said, very quietly.

Vira's heart ached at the thought, but his ideas were reasonable, and Vira realized that caution and careful planning were what they needed more than anything.

"I'll do it, for your sake and our baby's," she said, returning his kiss with a fierce one. "Even though I cannot imagine giving myself to any man but you. And I'll find ways to gather allies. You need Edmund Waters, and Trajan, and that Braavosi. And Maelys, the city watchman." Her mouth twitched a little. A dragonrider who chose to police the city amused her.

"Matrim Rivers?" Vira had heard of this outlaw, though only in connection to the suffering Matrim Rivers had brought to House Tully. She shuddered at the idea of going after another bandit. "This time, we hunt with dragons. But we would have to finish that before returning to the city for our weddings, is that not so? We should fly to the riverlands on the morrow, in that case."

She stroked and played with his fingers as she continued to think. "Yes, you are right - we need time," she said, very quietly, almost a whisper. "We cannot risk the - death being traced back to you. And I wonder if I can't persuade Rhaegar to take up your cause, if we can promise him a dragon, and another bride."

Vira laughed out loud as Maekar described his conversation with Rhaegar. "You must have made the poor man piss himself," she said. She melted into his tight embrace as he kissed her. Her mouth was soft and yielding as she kissed him back.

"Maybe he won't take me to bed if I can persuade him that he is better off with a marriage that can be annulled," Vira said quietly.

"The King strikes me as the sort if man who would enjoy seeing Rhaegar shamed," Vira said, kissing Maekar on the mouth, and then trailing kisses down his throat. She rose from his lap, parted his legs, and knelt between them. "Though I suppose we could simply say that it is because in with child."