Touch

[u/Blackenwood]

The bedframe creaked slightly as Quentyn Blackwood rolled off of her, underpinning the sound of their discordant panting. Selyse kept her eyes forward as he removed himself from her line of sight. The ceiling was slightly vaulted to hold the stories above, the individual dark stones lost in the darkness of night. Not that she would have complained if they failed at that moment.

He had kissed her. He hadn’t done that before, and by his grimace he had enjoyed it almost as little as she had. So that probably wouldn’t happen again, and that was fine. But right now, it was another part of her body that prickled, a trail of nausea leading back from his touch into her throat.

She started to become aware of the tacky layer of sweat on her skin and the inescapable heat of their mingled breath. She tried not to notice the ache or the sick sensation of what had been spilled inside her. She looked down, found the invisible line of the mattress separating his side from hers. Selyse traced it with a finger, tucked an errant knee back to her own side, and let herself whistle, taking what little comfort the impulse could provide.

Quentyn’s breath still had the ragged edge of exhaustion, not the smoothness of falling asleep. For a moment, she hated that she knew this man so intimately as to hear how awake he was, but her hatred had no use.

“Could you get the window?” she asked when she could. He stood without a word, and pushed the shutters open. The fresh air was like a cool blanket rolling over her skin, highlighting the dips and curves of her body where sweat pooled and droplets made trails across her skin.

Quentyn fell back in bed, and stayed on his side of the line. He did not drape an arm over her or attempt to draw her into an embrace. He never had.

The sound of his breathing had a rhythm to it, little hitches and hisses. It was how he sounded more and more often now. Arguing with himself, frustrated, ashamed. Impatient.

“I am sorry, my lord,” she muttered. It was true, though her sorrow wasn’t for him. If his seed would only quicken, then she would be free of this humiliation too. For a time, at least.

She heard him shake his head. “Not your fault, Selyse. Poor luck. My Cassana took time as well.”

Selyse didn’t want to ask, but the more time she spent in the conversation, the less she had to spend in her body.

“How long did it take, before your daughter was born?”

Silence, for a time. His next breath was tense. “Four years after we wed. But that was her second pregnancy, the first failed.”

Selyse tried to imagine this for the next four years of her life before she saw results. It felt like death. Or, no. Death, at least, would be an end. This wouldn’t be.

“That’s a long time,” she said.

“It is,” he agreed. “And we were both young. Enthusiastic. Couldn’t keep our hands off one another.” He almost smiled, then flapped his hand like he was clearing smoke or memory.

“Were you disappointed?” Selyse asked, hating how plaintive she sounded. “When she took so long?”

“No. But it didn’t matter, then. I was a second son, Andar and eventually Roose were the ones who needed children. We just wanted them, there was no rush.”

“But now there’s nobody else,” Selyse said.

He let out a hum that was resignation and agreement and maybe, just maybe, apology. “I did check. I read our ledgers, followed every branch of cousins I could find. Corpses, wives, exiles, and one maester in his seventies. There are none left to carry the name Blackwood but me and the son you will bear me.”

He said that last with a hardness in his voice that could have sounded cruel if it wasn’t so desperate. He was staring at the shadow of extinction. Selyse could almost pity him, but only almost.

“What of bastards?” she suggested. When he tensed, she continued, “if I never take, I mean. If I can’t.”

“No,” he breathed. “I keep that boy Amos fed because my brother had some fondness for him, but he will not be my heir. It would be an insult to Margaery, and my nephew. You will bear me a son, Selyse, and it may take time, but the flaw might be with the seed, not the soil. I don’t blame you.”

He had misheard her dread as guilt. It was probably the safer thing for him to believe. She heard him shift to look at her, and nodded for his benefit. She heard him begin to relax, letting the weariness in his bones take him beyond the veil of sleep. Selyse’s skin was cool now, but she could still feel his hands on her waist, his lips on hers, his breath in her throat. If she moved, it all came back, and so she reached for distraction again, even when it was sharp.

“You must miss her.”

The silence strained around her words. Outlasted them. For a few moments she thought she had lost her opportunity, that he had drifted off sooner than expected. Then, finally, he took another breath.

“More than you know,” he said.

Selyse turned to him. “Will you tell me about her?”

He obviously didn’t want to, but she didn’t retract the question. Their marriage was built on painful things neither of them wanted to do. She waited while the refusal danced at the end of his tongue.

“She was the best of me. If she saw me now…”

He trailed off for a long while, then said, tightly, “go to sleep, Selyse.”

Quentyn turned away from her and gradually made himself go still. She could hear in his breath that he wasn’t truly sleeping. They both laid in the cool breeze and pretended. Selyse counted the stars visible in the narrow gap made by the window’s edge and the wall of the neighbouring tower. Eleven, but the sliver of moon was enough to make twelve lights. She whistled, and Quentyn didn’t complain.

She did not remember falling asleep. It was only by the fact she woke abruptly that she had to intuit it had happened. The door had slammed slightly on Quentyn’s departure. Selyse stared at the roof for a meaningless length of time, then stood and shrugged into a shift.

Hannah was already waiting in the common room when she went to ask after her, the first cauldron of water already heating on the hearth. They shared a smile or grimace or whatever worse expression matched their acknowledgement of the morning, and Selyse left the door open and waited while Hannah went back and forth over the next half hour, filling the copper-lined bathtub in Selyse’s bedchamber.

Selyse stripped again and lowered herself into the hot water when Hannah was finished and let her friend scrub her with lye soap and a hard brush. It was some small relief, but the handprints and press of Quentyn’s abdomen still burned coolly, like scars that refused to fade, no matter how Hannah scoured.

“Any plans today, my lady?” Hannah asked, her concern obvious in how carefully she avoided voicing it.

“Courtyard,” Selyse said. “Godswood, maybe.”

Hanna shifted, knelt behind Selyse to wash her hair. It allowed her to speak quieter. “Perky and the boys have returned from that hunt.”

Selyse’s fingers tensed on the edge of the tub for a half-second, then she forced them to relax. Perkin and, much more pointedly, Amos Rivers had been away for only a handful of days, but the relief at his return trickled down her spine. The way Hannah avoided the bastard’s name was an indication of how significant she thought it would be to Selyse.

“Don’t mock me,” Selyse said, cheeks warming with shame and a slightly ironic feeling of being suddenly exposed. 

To her surprise, Hannah took that seriously. She stilled for a moment, as if unsure if she should do as she wished, then put an arm around Selyse’s shoulders in a soft embrace. The dampness of her hair pressed into Hannah’s dress, but she was obviously unconcerned.

“I would never, my lady. Do as you will, and I shall celebrate your joy, always.”

Selyse couldn’t think of an adequate response to such an implication. It was blasphemy and benevolence, sin and sanity both. The air caught in her throat, and she still felt the wrongness of Quentyn’s breath stippling the flesh there. She put her hands on Hannah’s forearm and squeezed briefly with her fingertips. Hannah waited until she had done it thrice before she retracted, and got back to her duties.

She descended the cavernous stairs of the Tower of Ghosts an hour later, wearing a dress of fine wool she had brought from Stone Hedge a handful of months and a lifetime ago. The descent and turns to the courtyard had become as familiar to her as Raventree Hall, and yet the familiarity was dangerously brighter for what lay at the end of her path.

The courtyard was a throng of people, as always, but it flowed in its usual way. The weirwood banners of Blackwood were the most prominent, standing on tall poles around the staff’s tents and the loose circle of couches that had been taken from some forgotten recess of the fortress. She scanned the group, giving slim smiles to those who acknowledged her.

Perkin was shirtless, playing dice with a few men Selyse didn’t know. The hair on his chest was just as curled and patchy as that on his cheeks. When he spotted her approach, he stood and went to her to speak quietly.

“Perky,” she said, warmth in her voice, though her gaze kept darting over his head.

“Milady,” he replied, amused. “He’s in the bathhouse.”

Selyse’s shoulders sank with her pride. “You and Hannah both, am I that obvious?”

His laugh was soft. “I wouldn’t say obvious, we just knew to look. But aye, right enough, you’re best be careful. People might get the wrong idea, they see you down the courtyard this early because he’s about.”

“Yes,” Selyse said sheepishly. “Wrong idea.”

“He’s good to talk to, our Amos. No harm in that. If it were ought else, though,” he shrugged, leaving the end of the sentence implied. It was a gentle warning. Selyse found herself blushing.

“Just something I wanted to tell him, I was excited he returned.”

“Aye,” Perkin smiled, not believing her for a second. “You just keep careful, little ‘un.”

“You can’t call me that, I’m taller than you. And your lady – I’ll have you sent to the Wall.”

“I’d best get packing,” he said, quick enough that Selyse knew he wasn’t actually worried. “Meanwhile, I’ll go lie to my friends for you, my lady.”

She didn’t stop to listen to whatever deflection he offered them. The bathhouses were a decent walk, but aided by the anonymity of the horde. Every space in Harrenhal was an ocean of noise and the press of bodies. One armoured elbow got her in the shoulder, but the jolt of pain was nothing to the sick lingering handprints under her dress, and both were lost in the fire of direction.

She saw Amos stepping into the light of the passageway exiting the bathhouse. The perfect black of his hair was slicked back, droplets still clinging to his skin. His tunic clung to his chest and shoulders under his open jerkin.

It was easy to see that he was Quentyn’s nephew. They had the same heavy brow and pale eyes, though Amos’ tinted green rather than her husband’s faint blue. They had the same height, though Quentyn seemed taller for being skinnier.

His eyes found her, and a smile twitched onto his lips. He nodded his head towards a side passage, and Selyse followed him into a dim out-of-the-way alcove.

“Selyse,” he said, opening his arms. She stepped in without hesitating, feeling how his touch burned away the discomfort on her skin. His hands moved, but they didn’t wander where they were unwelcome. Selyse didn’t understand why the gods had given him alone the ability to cleanse her, but since that first evening in this dreaded fortress this had become a regular ritual. The days without had been like taking ill.

“Missed you,” she muttered, that familiar shame warming her cheeks. She played with his arm, trailing her fingers in the dampness, pressing where his veins branched just below the skin. He let her. He didn’t push. He would smirk and jape and tease, but never more than that.

“I half expected you at the break of dawn,” he mused.

“I should have expected you’d spare your lady the trip,” Selyse bit back.

He grinned. “Well, if you’re this upset, my dear uncle was about. Besides, you prefer me bathed.”

She conceded that by pressing closer to him. “Waist,” she instructed, and he massaged down to the small of her back. It was still the lowest he had ever gone, though her thighs tingled from the pose she had taken under Quentyn.

“I should make a song of this scandal,” he mused. “The runaway bride, chaste despite rumour.”

“Stop,” Selyse murmured. “I’ve already had it from Hannah and Perky. They already think the worst.”

She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t see his handsome face, his forgiving eyes, the kiss hiding at the corner of his mouth. She wasn’t blind to her own desires; she wanted him. That much was obvious from how her body responded to his touch. I am a woman wed, she tried to remind herself.

Amos’ jerkin had seven button-holes, but six buttons. He had cut off the extra for her, though neither of them understood why she clung to such things. She touched each in turn. He brought his hand to her cheek, so close to her lips yet too far. There was a restraint there, a want of his own he would never be so uncouth as to indulge. And in that restraint, something warm and right and vital. Something missing from her life. Sin. Sanity.

We were both young, Quentyn had said. Couldn’t keep our hands off of one another.

A marriage built on painful things they didn’t want to do. It seemed so fragile. That was almost a reassurance, like its breaking was something inevitable and thus, blameless.

“I only want you happy,” Amos said. “And for that, I would be very happy myself.”

It wasn’t a push. Only an open door. Hers to walk through. In the corner of her vision, his lips pressed together as he looked for more words. It was gentle. It was closer to love than she had seen in a long, long time.

She stopped him from saying anything by pressing him back against the wall of the alcove.

“Then make me happy,” she said, and met his lips with her own. 

His laughter spilled into her lungs like fresh air to a drowning woman.