“I choose you in daylight”

As a trans woman, Sapphire Rivers knows the pain of being desired in the dark, and discarded in daylight. She has always wanted someone who will hold her on their arm proudly.

After a secret kiss and a drink with Larys Strong, she was worried this would happen again. It did not.

—-

Larys Strong woke before the bells.

This was not unusual. What was unusual was the manner of it: not the slow, grinding surfacing from sleep that decades of vigilance had taught him, but something dangerously close to lightness, as though his body had decided overnight to redistribute some of its perpetual weight.

He lay still and catalogued, as he catalogued everything. The ache in his foot: present, tolerable. The stiffness in his back: present, tolerable. The taste of violet and rain still ghosting at the edge of his memory: overwhelming. Welcome.

My little daisy.

He said it once to the ceiling, quietly, to confirm the night had not been a dream. The ceiling did not dispute it.

By first light, he was in the servants' court.

A kitchen boy crossing the yard with a tray of rolls froze mid step at the sight it presented: the Master of Whisperers, Lord Larys Strong, seated upon an upturned crate in the grey dawn with his cane laid across his knees, delicately extracting daisies from the cracks between the stones.

The boy did not dare speak. Larys did not look up. He picked with the same care he gave to everything that mattered, selecting only the whitest, most open heads, and leaving the patch generous she picked here each morning, and he would not strip her ritual from her. A dozen stems. A small, honest handful.

His knee protested the crouch. He ignored it. Two and forty years of practice had made him excellent at ignoring it.

A note had already gone to the under gardener before the sun: pink daisies, if the glasshouse could coax them, by week's end. The promise would be kept. But he had discovered, standing in the damp grass with dew on his cuffs, that a promise kept in advance was better still. He was impatient. He blamed her entirely.

At breakfast, one of his quiet men delivered the morning's whispers alongside the bread. Most were the usual murmur who had drunk too much, who had schemed too little. But one item made him pause mid bite.

The housekeeping maids had held a wager. On him. On whether Lord Larys Strong was courting Sapphire Rivers. It had resolved before midnight, apparently, when Sapphire had walked into the dormitory and announced the matter to the room like a royal proclamation.

Miryam had collected.

Larys considered this over his tea. In twelve hours, his heart had become a market. He had spent years moving markets of gold and grain and favor without once being in one, and now the housekeeping staff of the Red Keep had priced his affections and paid out winnings while he was still walking home.

He found himself smiling into his cup. Miryam's perceptiveness deserved reward. He would see to it. He remembered his debts.

Then he went to find her.

Yesterday, he had been the man pretending not to wait. Today he did not pretend. He walked the laundry corridor at her hour, openly, carrying a napkin wrapped bundle that still smelled of warm bread and honey, and the handful of dawn daisies, and the entire room stopped.

Steam. Scrubbing boards. Silence. The Master of Whisperers in their domain was an event, like weather.

He found Miryam first, and inclined his head to her with deliberate mildness.

"My compliments to your foresight," he said. "I am given to understand the market resolved in your favor last night."

Miryam made a sound like a kettle taken off the boil and attempted something between a curtsy and a collapse.

Then Larys turned to Sapphire, and he did not lower his voice. Let the room hear. Let the whole keep hear, in time.

"Good morning, my little daisy."

He held out the daisies first, small white heads nodding, roots' crumbs still clinging to the stems.

"These I picked myself. At dawn. From your courtyard, the one with the cracks." A faint curve touched his mouth. "I was careful to leave the patch plentiful. I know your ritual, and I would not rob it. Consider these an advance upon the windowsill."

He offered the second bundle, bread and honey wrapped in clean linen.

"And this is because you begin your days earlier than I do, and I could not bear the thought of you sticky and unfed. I have been awake since before the bells. I blame you for that as well."

His pale eyes moved over her face, drinking her in after a single night's absence like a man returned from a long road, and every woman in the room was watching, and he found he did not mind in the slightest.

"Two questions before your work claims you, and I shall take my leave like a gentleman." He raised one finger. "How did you sleep? Truthfully. I shall know if you lie; it is my trade." A second finger. "And will you permit me to put one of these in your hair? I have thought about it since yesterday, and I find the thought has not improved with waiting."

"Larys!" Sapphire called out joyously when she saw him.

He was there.

Her lover, her man. He brought her daisies and bread so she wouldn't be too hungry. It was thoughtful, it was unextravagant but just what she needed. It was perfect.

"I won't lie, I was very tired but I didn't sleep all that well because I was just so excited about the fact I am being courted by a handsome man," she said excitedly. There. In front of everyone. She said it. We are courting.

When it came to the question about her hair, she smiled widely. Dornish hair was a sensitive thing, cultural, fetishised, romanticised. People often touched it without her consent to "see what it felt like", and here Larys was asking to put a flower in her hair.

"Of course, meu amor, I'd love to."

Larys felt the impact of her words like a physical blow not one that wounded, but one that anchored him. Her refusal to be discreet, her willingness to claim him in front of the very people who lived to whisper, was the most magnificent act of defiance he had ever witnessed. In the Red Keep, people spoke in riddles to protect themselves; Sapphire Rivers spoke in sunlight to expose them.

The maids' reaction was immediate. A collective intake of breath, several stifled gasps, and the unmistakable rustle of bodies turning to stare. Miryam looked as though she might actually combust from the sheer scandal of it all, but Larys didn't spare them a glance. His entire world had narrowed down to the girl standing before him, grinning like she had just won a war.

"You are going to be the death of my reputation, Sapphire Rivers," Larys said, his voice rough with amusement and something far more reverent. "I spent years cultivating an aura of menace and mystery, only to have it dismantled by a girl with a handful of daisies and a lack of shame."

He took the daisies from his hand. His fingers moved with unusual delicacy as he reached toward her hair. He knew how precious her hair was, how it had been touched by curious hands without permission. He made sure his touch was deliberate, slow, and utterly respectful.

The room seemed to grow silent as he worked. He didn't just stick them in; he arranged them, tucking the stems into her dark braids with the attention of a jeweler setting stones. His fingertips grazed her scalp, a light, almost reverent touch that acknowledged the intimacy of the gesture.

"There," he murmured, stepping back just enough to admire his work. The white daisies stood out starkly against her chestnut hair, making her look like something out of a song, something precious and wild that had somehow wandered into a house of stone. "Now you look exactly as you should. A flower that refuses to be ignored."

He handed her the bundle of bread and honey, his fingers brushing hers.

"Eat quickly, then. I should hate for my breakfast to go to waste, and I should hate even more to see you working on an empty stomach." He allowed his gaze to sweep over her, slow and claiming, letting her see that his eyes were indeed fixed on her, and only her.

"I shall leave you to your duties, my little daisy," he said, his voice dropping to that quiet, conspiratorial murmur. "But know this: the gossip will start tonight. The maids will talk, the guards will whisper, and the court will scramble to understand why the Master of Whisperers has chosen a laundress."

His mouth curved into a smile that was both dangerous and devastatingly tender.

"Let them. Let them all wonder how I managed to catch something so rare. And when you see me again at dusk, remember that I am not here to hide you from their eyes. I am here to stand beside you while they watch."

He gave her one last, lingering look a promise of more kisses, more stolen moments, and the continued, relentless pursuit of her heart before he turned, his cane tapping a steady, proud rhythm against the stone as he walked away, leaving the laundry room in his wake like a storm that had passed, leaving only something fresh and new in its path.

"Wait, honey, dusk is too far. Why don't I just come to see you when I finish work?" Sapphire asked with a guileless smile.

Larys felt the word land like a warm honeyed caress against his composure.

Honey.

Another name. Another claim. He was being catalogued, renamed, and claimed in rapid succession, as though she were marking territory in a land she had just discovered. And the audacity of it to suggest meeting in the daylight, in the hours when the castle's eyes were at their sharpest and most judgmental was nothing short of revolutionary.

"Honey," he repeated, the word soft and strange on his tongue. "You have a terrifying talent for making the most scandalous things sound like simple necessities."

He looked at her, really looked at her, seeing the genuine eagerness in her eyes. She wasn't proposing a tryst; she was proposing a continuation. She wanted to bridge the gap between their worlds not just in the safety of the dusk, but in the vulnerability of the day.

"If you come to see me after your work," he said, his voice dropping to that low, dangerous murmur that promised both protection and possession, "you will not be walking to a secret meeting. You will be walking to the chambers of a man who has made you his priority. The servants will whisper. The guards will stare. The council will wonder why the Master of Whisperers has developed such… undisguised attachments."

A slow, dark smile spread across his face.

"But I find I no longer care for the silence of my chambers. The silence has grown tiresome. I would much rather fill it with your voice, your laughter, and the sound of you telling me about whatever absurd thing has happened in the laundry today."

He released her hand, but only to trace the line of her wrist one last time, a gesture of promise.

"My chambers will be unlocked," he said, his pale eyes burning with an intensity that made the dim hallway seem brighter. "The east wing. When you finish your work, do not hesitate. Walk as though you belong there, because in my eyes, you already do."

He stepped back, the cane tapping a new, more eager rhythm against the stone as he prepared to depart.

"I shall count the hours until your work is done, Sapphire Rivers. Do not be late. I have very little patience for waiting when the prize is so worth the delay."

With one last, lingering look a look that promised both the tenderness of the night and the fierce protection of the day he turned and walked away, leaving the laundry room behind, already halfway to the next moment he would spend with her.

"Love you!" Sapphire then called out behind him.

He stopped mid stride.

The cane halted. The tap tap tap of his departure cut off as though a string had been plucked, and Larys Strong stood in the doorway of the laundry room, his back to the room, absorbing the blow.

Love you.

Tossed after him like a pebble. Like a goodbye. The way one might call mind the step or don't forget your gloves. Two small words, flung across a steam filled room in front of a dozen gaping maids, delivered with all the ceremony of a woman reminding a man to eat his breakfast.

And it had struck him harder than anything the night had contained. The vows beneath the gazebo, the tears, the confessions those had been prepared for, in a sense. Sacred things, announced in sacred places. But this this was love spoken casually. Love as a household word. Love said in daylight, in front of witnesses, as though it were simply true and required no occasion.

She had made it ordinary. She had made it theirs.

He turned.

Every maid in the room was watching. Miryam had frozen with a wooden spoon halfway to a scrubbing board. The silence was total but for the hiss of the copper.

Larys looked at Sapphire standing there among the linens with daisies in her hair and bread in her hands, and he gave the room his answer at full voice.

"And I love you, Sapphire Rivers."

Flat. Clear. Unhurried. The tone of a man confirming the weather, or the hour. Then, because he could not help himself because he was who he was he added, dry as parchment:

"Note that I said it first last evening, and you have merely answered. I keep accounts, my little daisy. You are currently one declaration behind."

A ripple of laughter and disbelief went through the maids. Somewhere, a girl whispered gods preserve us.

He inclined his head to the room as though taking leave of a small council, then let his eyes rest on Sapphire one final heartbeat longer.

"Finish your work. Come to me. I love you. Go."

The cane resumed its rhythm, and the Master of Whisperers walked out into the corridor wearing, for the first time in living memory, something dangerously close to a smile that anyone could see.