Chapter Text
Maeve had barely made it ten steps from her place hidden behind the courtyard wall when the footsteps caught up to her.
Hard soles, armored. Heavy.
Her heart jumped. For half a second, foolish hope bloomed in her chest. She thought of Sandor. He’d come to walk her back, maybe. Say something sharp and gruff, something that would make her hate him a little less for leaving her with his horrible ache and embarrassment for giving him a gift.
But the man who grabbed her arm was not Sandor.
Ser Meryn Trant’s grip was like iron, much smaller than Sandor's bear-paw-like grip, she recognized. Meryn’s beady eyes burned into hers with a blank look beneath his gilded helm. He didn’t speak until she tried to pull back.
“Lady Cersei requires your attendance.” Meryn held her arm firm, not getting away.
Maeve stiffened. “Now?”
A nod. No more. She followed because there was no other choice. They walked in silence, her heart beat too loudly. She thought of the half-heard conversation in the hallway earlier—Tyrion’s voice, Bronn’s sharp laughter—and wondered if this was why she was being summoned again. Suppose someone had seen her listening. Or, if Cersei had conveniently remembered she still hadn’t been properly punished.
The necklace. The one she had lost in the riot—dropped, forgotten, discarded in her panic to help a little girl not be torn apart. She had thought they hadn't even noticed, as there was a very real war front approaching. But of course they had, and now the Queen was blaming everything from the invasion to court morale on misplaced gifts to the future Queen Margery. The rose and vine necklace was either trampled underfoot, stolen, or sold, but never delivered to Margery Tyrell—all to save Sansa’s life.
She glanced sideways, once, hoping—stupidly—that Sandor might appear around a corner. That he might step in, do something, and whisk her away from her consequences.
But he didn’t.
When they reached the Queen’s solar, Trant knocked once, then pushed the door open and shoved her gently—but firmly inside. Maeve barely had time to steady her breath before the door closed behind her with a soft, terrible click. Maeve felt as if she was just where she stood just a few moments ago, under much of the same circumstances—honesty.
Cersei stood by the window, as before, a cup of wine in her hand, her long blonde hair pulled back with a gold and turquoise antler pin that Maeve had delivered to her not long before the “ring incident.” Cersei didn’t turn.
“You’ve been wandering,” she said lightly, as if commenting on the weather. “Eavesdropping. I suppose you think no one sees you, just because you keep your mouth shut.”
Maeve’s mouth dried. She said nothing, preparing for the worst this time, she felt the wound in her shoulder pulse with her heart.
Cersei took a long sip from her cup. “You're far too clever to be trusted.”
Then, without raising her voice, she said: “To what end?” The widow Queen said, voice deadly quiet. “Amusing yourself? A traitor’s daughter parading as a goldsmith?”
Maeve flinched.
“You think because I let you play with your tools and make pretty toys, you have any right to play with things you will never understand?” Cersei turned slowly. “You were given one task. One. And still, you find ways to disappoint me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, spare me meaning,” she snapped. “You mean nothing. That’s the point.”
Maeve’s breath caught in her throat.
“You’ve proven yourself untrustworthy, sneaking, lying, and losing a necklace worth twice your life. Reckless. So, I will remove the temptation.” Her tone had turned almost casual, as if she were discussing what was for supper.
“You are confined,” Cersei continued. “Effective immediately. You will remain in your forge or your chamber. You will not walk the Keep. You will not speak unless summoned. No deliveries, no courtyard, no errands. You may work if work keeps you quiet. Work yourself to death if need be, as long as I do not hear of the goldsmith wench again.”
Maeve's chest tightened with anger, and she pleaded, “For how long?”
Cersei gave her a cruel, twisted, cat-like smile. “Until I decide you’re not a liability.”
Maeve’s heart pounded, relieved it wasn’t her head rolling across the stone floor. Again, her lesson of honesty went unlearned on her behalf. She half-expected Ser Trant to drag her away back to her cage —but it wasn’t him.
This time, it was Sandor.
He stood just beyond the threshold, looming like the shadow of a ruined wall, his face unreadable, Maeve’s face heated with embarrassment at him seeing her punished again. She couldn’t meet his face; instead, her eyes dropped to a pin attached to the leather of his chest armor. The silver pin had a short chain attached that connected the gifted charm. The dog's eyes winked at her in the moonlight that streamed through the windows, a touch of humanity in the face of her sentencing.
Her eyes began to well up, just looking at him.
“Escort her,” Cersei said behind her, as if she were discussing a package to be delivered.
Sandor didn’t speak. He only nodded once.
The door slammed behind them with a dull, final sound.
Maeve walked stiffly ahead, arms locked around herself as if she could keep the Queen’s words from sinking in too deeply. Confined. Watched.
They didn’t speak. She didn’t want to. Her thoughts were blistering — half rage, half shame.
She wasn’t just banished, not dead either. She was boxed. No windows, no fresh air. Just heat, stone, and eyes always watching her now. The forge was her world, and she would rot in it. Something was different this time; it felt final.
With Stannis Baratheon approaching King's Landing, the threat of death more ever-present than ever, she almost felt at peace with the idea of being forgotten.
The forge was cold without the furnace lit, but Maeve worked anyway.
She was completely alone, no messenger had come, no food besides the scarcely filled trays that were slid beneath the door, and no sound but the occasional footstep outside her chamber—likely one of the guards posted to ensure she stayed put. Whether it was Clegane or not, she never saw his face; this time, the door remained closed.
On the first day, she had nothing but silence and pacing and the echo of the Queen’s voice in her skull. Tolerated, not welcomed. Watched, not trusted.
She pressed her back to the cool stone wall and stared at the ceiling, thinking about the necklace and Sansa. How she’d acted on instinct, not duty, for a girl who deserved to be saved, and about how now she might die in this room. Forgotten by her captors, who posed as in need of her services. They needed her alive to please the eyes of the adoring city when this war was over.
Or, they wanted her dead, to die in this city like her Father— then in a way she would get her wish to see him again .
She thought— if only for a second that she could do it herself. Get her death over with and take the pleasure away from the Lannisters of seeing her dead at their convenience. But the thought vanished at the idea of Sandor finding her corpse, stiff and leaking in this room. She thought of his soft eyes, which already held a deep sorrow within them, widening at the sight of her lifeless body strewn across her bed. Finding her in the same room that weeks before they shared in quiet company, cracking hidden smiles at poorly said jokes.
She couldn’t bear to think of him like that.
She groaned a frustrated sound into her hands, before pulling her hair back out of her face. Standing and continuing to pace the forge, which felt much different now, quieter, forgotten, and confined.
By the second day, Maeve awoke to her shoulder screaming a radiating pain of partial healing and partial impending infection. She needed medical care that she would not receive, especially now— her self-pity had hardened into resolve.
With no commissions at the moment, her hands began to itch for something to create; this time, this would be a gift to herself. Maeve took stock of what was left in the corners of the workshop: a few ingots of bronze and steel, a half-melted rod of gold, a broken file, scraps of leather.
If she was going to die here, she wouldn't go down helpless. She worked in silence, shaping the remnants into something useful—small, sharp, and hidden. A blade, not beautiful but functional, was disguised in a silver polishing cloth casing. Something she could slip into her sleeve or stitch into a seam. Just in case- not a weapon worthy of a knight, but something close, something that might give her a chance if the doors ever opened to fire and screams.
Her mind flashed to the vision of jumping on the back of Sansa’s attacker. Looking back, she couldn't even remember why or how she managed that strength. If she were to be left here during the battle, she needed to be able to muster that same violence if the need arose, and she needed a weapon to do so.
She worked until her fingertips were red and her nails split at the effort. Her shoulder ached along the seam of her healing wound. But she did not stop.
The daylight slipped away into a swelteringly humid night. She slept on the bench in the corner, her head on the cool wood, her body wrapped in a thin sheet, her dreams unsettled by heat and the hiss of imagined flames.
Maeve drifted off with her fingers wrapped around a piece of steel she hadn’t yet smelted down.
In the dream, the forge was dark, but still warm. She felt it before she saw it—someone behind her, tall, unmoving. His presence filled the space like smoke. She should have been afraid; her hair all but stood on end.
She wasn’t afraid.
A large hand slid over her hip, fingers splayed. She should have turned, should have pushed away, but her body stayed still, too heavy to move. The hand stayed there, anchoring her. Possessive. Gentle.
She exhaled slowly as another hand, calloused, warm, brushed the back of her neck, pushing aside her hair. Then, lips. Just below her ear. Barely there. Not urgent.
Slow.
She shivered.
The mouth lingered, not taking, not demanding, just...touching. As if it had every right.
“You’re not afraid of me?” the voice whispered. Familiar. Deep. Unmistakable.
“No,” she breathed, but the sound came out strange. Needy.
Fingers brushed her cheek. Traced the curve of her jaw. A thumb swiped beneath her chin, soft and unhurried.
She didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Her breathing slowed in the dream, soothed.
Ghosting fingers across her lips, holding her chin before moving down to wrap around the front of her neck, the lightest press at her pulse point. Her heart pounded in her throat. Her lips parted.
Then—gone.
Her eyes snapped open.
The room was empty. The forge was cold.
She sat bolt upright on the bench, the blanket falling from her shoulders in a heap. Her skin was clammy, her breath uneven, and between her thighs she felt a flicker of humiliation that made her face burn.
“No,” she groaned, half aloud. “No.”
It was a dream. It meant nothing.
She gritted her teeth and stood, half hoping the floor would crack open and swallow her whole. Of all the things her mind could conjure in captivity, of course, it would be him. She cursed under her breath and pushed her palms to her eyes, trying to banish the phantom touch.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered, furious with herself.
It wasn’t real. Of course, it wasn’t real.
That hand had no right to be gentle. That voice has no right to sound like comfort.
As she shifted to stand, she was met with a dizzying pain in her shoulder, a jolt back to the reality of her confinement, no Maester, no stitches. The pain in her shoulder should have begun to settle, but without medical attention and a proper cleaning, Maeve can only hope whatever is beneath this bandage will sort itself out. She hadn’t dared to replace the bandage since she’d tended to it last, too scared to see bone and gore.
She slammed a piece of scrap metal back onto the anvil and got back to work.
She would not dream again.
On, third day, she worked her thoughts into silence, time falling away in moments. By nightfall, the sky outside turned the forge room gold. The hidden blade rested in the folds of her skirts, dull but deadly. She stared at it for a long time before tucking it away.
Then the lock on the door clicked.
She froze.
The door opened slowly, and Maeve didn’t move, didn’t speak, her mind flipped to an image of her hanging body at the gallows, her lesson learned—until she saw him.
Sandor Clegane stood in the doorway, shadow stretched long across the stone floor, half his face in torchlight, fully clad in his usual armor. He didn’t speak at first, just let the door close behind him with a quiet thud.
She saw it then. Pinned over his heart was the charm she had made—small, rough, a dog’s head carved from iron and strung on a chain. She had not dreamed it in the Queen’s chambers; he was wearing it.
Maeve stared. Not at his face, not at the scar. At the simple, ugly, beautiful thing hanging over his armor.
She wanted to ask why, but the words wouldn’t come.
He broke the silence first. “You still look like shite.”
She let out a small, incredulous laugh. “You look like the first person I've seen in three days.”
A pause.
His eyes scanned the room—the cold forge, the scraps of metal, the worn workbench.
“You make anything sharp?” he asked, like he already knew the answer.
She didn’t answer. Not out loud. But her fingers curled just slightly at her side.
Then, softer Sandor added, “The ships are landing by tomorrow night. They'll all be out there tomorrow. Killing each other. Fire. Smoke. Screaming.”
“You should’ve never come here.” He didn't look at her when he said it.
Her voice was low. “You think I don’t know that, not like I had any say.”
He nodded once. Almost imperceptibly. Then he turned to go.
“Sandor,” she said.
He stopped in the doorway.
She didn’t know what she was going to say. “Thank you for seeing me,” felt vulnerable. “I’m scared to die” felt stupid. So she just said:
“You’re wearing it.”
He didn’t turn back. But she saw his hand twitch toward the charm at his chest.
Then he was gone. And Maeve was alone again. But this time, she didn't feel quite so unarmed.
The night had stretched long and breathless, her forge cold, her hands idle. Even the metal she'd shaped—the small, sharp object—rested heavily in her skirt pocket. Through her balcony window, the air felt wrong. Too still. Too hot.
Then the bells began.
At first, one, high and clear. Then another, and another, until the whole city seemed to tremble under their weight. Maeve stood in the center of her room, her breath held in her chest like it might keep the walls from caving in.
She didn’t know if they were warning bells. Mourning bells. She only knew they meant something had come.
Footsteps thundered past her door. Then silence.
She started to believe she’d been left there. Forgotten, buried in stone like an old relic, something once precious, now discarded. She was so tired of living in fear and pain. Every day since she arrived here at the Red Keep, she had been solely surviving, scraping, begging, and crying for her life. Her only solace had been her craft. Her dream of having her own forge and making beautiful jewelry for the rich and important was fulfilled and bashed to pieces at the same time. Now, she just wanted to live through this day.
Once she heard the bells, Maeve attempted to conceal herself in her room. She tipped her work table and bench onto their sides and pushed them up against a wall like a shield. She positioned the table to watch the door. Gods forbid the battle seeped its way inside the Keep, no room would be spared. She flinched as she heard something heavy hit a far-off wall, which shook the entire structure; the idea of this stone building coming down atop her hung in her mind.
She thought of Sandor, and of the way he cut Sansa’s attackers down as if they were nothing, just meat and bone. She envisioned him now in her mind, his eyes blown black and breath coming hard as he swung his blade. She wondered what he thought about in the moment of taking a man’s life, did he feel anything?—She’d felt nothing, only action, her body moving without her thinking.
From her chamber, she heard well enough the severity of the battle that raged outside her windows. She saw the smoke that climbed the stone walls, making her chambers foggy with the ash of fires raging outside the walls of the Keep.
She heard the sliding of boots, the clang of armor, the rattle of chainmail, stopping directly in front of her door. Her heart leaped in her throat.
The door handle rattled once, locked from the outside so that she couldn't get out, but someone with a key could get in, Cerci saw to that.
At this moment, a key was a mere illusion of protection, as whoever was trying to get into her room began throwing themselves against the entrance, the door’s wood slats creaking with stress.
Maeve began to prepare herself to fight for her life, her vision swimming at the terror rising in her blood. Her shaking hands were trying to fish the knife from her skirts.
The door flung open, hard enough to take chunks of stone off the wall it slammed into. Maeve jumped to her feet, her knife clattering from her hand to the floor.
Sandor stood at the threshold, smoke rising off his armor, eyes wild, blood on his hands. He looked like a wraith—something dragged up from the depths of Hell and sent crashing through the Red Keep one last time.
“Get up,” he growled.
She stared at him, horrified— relieved. She scrambled to grab her makeshift blade from the floor beside her.
His voice was rough and loud over the growing volume outside of the forge. “We’re leaving. The fucking city is burning, and I’m not dying in it. Neither are you.”
She took a step back. “What? Sandor—Where?”
“War. Fire.” He bared his teeth. He stomped across the room in two long steps, grabbed her satchel from the floor, and began stuffing tools into it. She moved to stop him, but he caught her wrist mid-motion, eyes snapping to hers.
“You’re coming. Now.”
“But—” Her voice failed her as she looked at him. His face smeared with ash, his hair soaked with sweat, and his black cloak half torn from his shoulders. She could smell the battle on him—blood and smoke and something worse beneath it, something scorched.
He released her wrist but didn’t step back. “Sansa wouldn’t come.”
Maeve blinked. “Sansa?”
“I offered. Begged her, nearly enough. Thought I could save her, too.” He shook his head like he was awoken from a bad dream. “She’s staying.”
There was silence—only the distant roar of fire beyond the walls and the uneven thud of her heart.
“And me?” she asked, voice small.
“Not asking, you're walking or I’m carryin’ you.”
She swallowed.
He turned away before she could say anything more, tossing the bag to her. “If you’ve got anything you can’t live without, grab it. Now.”
She snapped into action, realizing the reality of the situation, they were fleeing—a way out, right now. She scrambled to the bench, finished packing the most important and irreplaceable tools. Then rushed to her bed, falling to her knees to retrieve the trunk under her bed frame, which held her minimal wardrobe. She smashed what she could into the rucksack: hairpins, a folder of her father's drafts for pieces never made, a few gold coins she’d saved.
Maeve looked over her shoulder to see Sandor staring out of the open door, expression blank, jaw flexed, and hands in fists, clearly somewhere else or planning their next move.
Maeve has taken every opportunity up to this moment to be her father’s daughter, hardworking, graceful, and most of all honest.
She prayed he wouldn't be disappointed by what she was about to do.
Maeve stood, walking to the corner of her room with the remains of her smithing supplies were stored. Her hands ghosted over her organized stash of supplies that were given to her when she arrived at the Keep, until they landed at the locked wooden box where her materials of Baratheon gems and jewelry were located. She opened it to see that she had barely used a quarter of the jewels for commissions so far. The box was, for the most part, the same as when she got it. With her hands shaking, she emptied the boxes' contents into an inconspicuous cloth pouch, tied it off, and shoved the pouch to the bottom of her satchel.
“I’m ready.” She stated blankly as she secured her pack over her unwounded shoulder.
The hall outside her door was already filled with smoke.
Wordlessly, his hand found hers, rough and tight, and didn’t let go.