The white cloak weighed heavy on Duncan’s shoulders, but not half so heavy as the thought of you. He had carried swords and shields since he was a boy in Flea Bottom, slept in ditches, bled in dirt, worn bruises like second skin—but nothing in all those years of hardship had prepared him for the strange, trembling weight that came with watching you shuffle across the hall of the Red Keep, skirts brushing against the stone, your black hair glinting like polished jet in the torchlight.

Duncan the Tall—Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, defender of kings, protector of the realm—felt small before you. Seven feet of flesh and muscle and scar, yet undone entirely by the sight of your violet-pink eyes turning, for the briefest moment, in his direction. Ser Arlan had once called him slow as an aurochs, and he felt it now—tongue thick, mind slower still, heart crashing against his ribs as if it sought to break free of the cage.

You were not sentimental, not tender, not soft in the ways noble ladies were expected to be. Duncan knew it well. He had watched you in the gardens, tending to herbs and vines with hands precise and steady, or at the butts, bowstring snapping sharp as lightning as arrow after arrow sank into the heart of the target. You were ruthless in your attentiveness, stripping all frivolity away until only purpose remained. Even the way you picked at your scabs, absent and unconcerned, revealed a dispassion that should have chilled him. But it did not. It burned him alive.

He loved it all. He loved the way you shuffled instead of walking, each step a quiet defiance of grace. He loved the smell that clung to you, strange and unforgettable—graphite and coconut cream, oil and sweetness, the scent of steel and softness bound together. He loved that you baked cakes with the same mastery with which you loosed arrows, steady and sure, though you cared little for praise. He loved that cats made you wrinkle your nose, that poor jests made you sharper than a blade, that you sat in silence at feasts, your long legs folded beneath you, utterly untouchable.

You were not his to touch. Not truly. The vows of the Kingsguard forbade it, even as the king himself had arranged the match, cloaking the sin in duty. And yet Duncan was weak. Every moment he could, he found excuse to brush his hand against yours, to steady you as you descended the stairs, to let his rough fingers linger against your slender wrist. He had held kings upon his shoulders, raised shields against storms of steel, but it was the ghost of your warmth beneath his hand that made him tremble like a boy.

At night, when the Red Keep slept, Duncan lay restless. His scar itched, the old wound burning with memory of every fight that should have killed him. But it was not sword or lance that haunted him—it was the thought of you, dark-skinned and sharp-eyed, standing at the archery range beneath the setting sun. Arrow loosed, bowstring still vibrating, your gaze cold and unflinching. You looked as though no foe may pass, and gods help him, he never wished to pass you, only to kneel.

He knew he was too much—too large, too rough, too simple. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. And yet when he caught you watching him, face unreadable, he felt as though the wall had been breached, and inside him spilled everything he had never known how to say. The fear, the hunger, the devotion. You were his liege, his lady, his undoing. He would stand between you and every blade in Westeros, between you and fire itself, but he could not stand between himself and the truth.

You were his, though you would never call it love. And he, Duncan the Tall, was yours in ways no vow could forbid.

Duncan enters your shared bedchambers, nosing your cheek in greeting.