Title: One Moment, One Morning
Genre: Romance
Rating: M
Pairing: Rhaegar x Lyanna
Spoilers: Season 7
Summary: For nothing, not the sun, not the rain, not even the brightest star in the darkest sky, could begin to compare to the wonder of you.
Word Count: 2,025
Warnings: N/A

Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: I'm crying over them still.

The morning light streamed in through the windows of the Tower of Joy in shafts as golden as the Lannister lions. It was soft and hazy, flecked with dust as fine as falling snow. Curtains as sheer as spider-silk blew in soft breezes. The wind danced in through the room, swirling through hair lightly as a kiss, making the strands tickle feather soft across faces slackened with sleep and relaxation.

The feeling makes one of the sleepers wrinkle their nose in agitation, and Rhaegar Targaryen's violet eyes blinked open as he brushed the sensation away. He stretched, long-limbed and languid as any dragon, shoulders cracking with movement. He felt satiated and relaxed, at peace as he had not in his memory. The reason for the feeling gave a sleepy murmur and arched into his side, arms stretched before her, fingers curling like a cat's.

Rhaegar shifted, until he was leaning up on an elbow and could gaze down at the wonder sleeping so contently beside him. His eyes softened, a smile tilting the corner of his mouth upwards without his accord. Elegant fingers hovered over an expanse of shoulder and spine the revealed by a slipping blanket, but he wasn't yet ready to wake her, preferring to drink his fill of her first.

Lyanna Stark was the most beautiful woman Rhaegar had ever seen. And he had seen many beautiful woman in his life. All the Targaryen women were beautiful, his mother, all the portraits of his aunts and cousins. And it seemed as if every other woman in the Seven Kingdoms could turn a head with the flutter of lashes. But Lyanna – for all her creamy skin and full, dark hair, and storm cloud eyes – was more than that. She shone with beauty, it radiated out of her like a summer's heat, visceral and tangible and real. Elia was beautiful, but she seemed far away, always somewhere else, afraid of him, of the Iron Throne. She was a delicate lady's fan, pretty and colorful and fragile. Lyanna was steel and snow and fangs. Elia saw an heir when she looked at him. Lyanna saw him.

He knew it had been folly, to give the laurel leaf crown to her at the tournament of Harrenhal instead of to his wife. Eddard Stark was there, Robert Baratheon, his own father. They had all seen. Had they all known, even then? What he did not? But she had been in his mind by then already for months. Her laughter haunted his daydreams and at night… at night…

When the Court had come to Dragonstone to lay eyes upon the Targaryen babe who would be Rhaegar's heir, Lyanna had been with them. When Rhaegar had escaped the hustle and bustle and conversation of endless courtiers and found solace in the gardens with a book, Lyanna had stumbled across him. He waited for the jests – that his mother had swallowed books while she was with child – or the chiding – that he should be elsewhere, being heir and host – but neither was forthcoming. She had cocked her head like a bird (like a wolf) and commented on the title.

"Maester Myths and Legends? Really? I would have thought you would read something more interesting."

While he sputtered and stammered out his indignant reply, she had thrown back her head and laughed, as bright as a falling star, loud and honest and beautiful, and he had been lost.

While his legal wife slipped in and out of her melancholy, always yearning for Dorne, eyes always far away and elsewhere, always half hating him for giving her the children that made her so weak and tired and ill, Lyanna was none of those things. He could see Winterfell in her eyes, see she loved her home, but for her, each day was an adventure, around each corner was a mystery, each new day a gift.

His fingers hovered over the curve of shoulder, a pale moon of flesh and skin, a wide white ribbon dangled elegantly from his wrist.

It was weeks before he realized he sought out her company – brought her the newest book he was reading, seeking her approval, seeking conversation, smiles, laughter. It was weeks before he realized that her smile made an answering smile echo on his own lips. He thought little of it until… until… Until one summer eve as she sat in the gardens beside him, eyes flicking interestedly over the scroll he had handed her, when she took a lip of sweet wine. The juice had stained her lips a bruised red and Rhaegar had a sudden, inexplicable moment where he wondered what it would be like to kiss her.

She glanced up when he shot to his feet, one brow arched in question. "Are you alright, my Lord?"

"I – I – " He was stammering. When Lyanna continued to stare at him expectantly, he was mortified – intrigued, confused – to feel the slow burn of a flush across his cheeks. "Apologies, my lady." He gave a jerking bow. "I have remembered a pressing matter. You may keep the scroll." And he fled.

Rhaegar was honorable and good and knightly. His marriage to Elia had been arranged, yes, with no love on either side, an alliance, a casualty of royalty. But he had always been true to her, had allowed no woman to draw his eye, to garner his interest, to break his vows.

But, then again, he had met no woman like Lyanna. Since his wayward thought the emotions he had dismissed and disregarded became impossible to ignore. A glance under dark lashes would catch his breath. A private joke, whispered to him, just for him, close and personal, would send his pulse racing. A laugh and his heart would trip a beat. A brush of hands and his face would burn. Once she returned a book to him and had written a note on the inside cover. The feeling that swelled within him was like nothing he had known. Except for his children.

He blinked, frozen in shock. He loved her. He stood, chair scrapping across the floor and falling backwards. He loved her. He...

When he left his chambers, he was not thinking, was not planning what he would do when he found her, only knew that he had to find her. Had to tell her, had to see… And what? What then? He didn't know. When he came across her in the godswood he didn't care.

"My Lord?" Her voice is startled and she makes to rise from the ground where she is praying, but she stills, startled, when he drops to his own knees before her. "Is something – "

His hands are on her cheeks, thumbs tracing the arch of cheekbones with slow, trembling movements. His eyes are wide and soft and terrified all at once, as he drinks her in. Her rain cloud eyes, confused but not frightened. Her pulse, at the tips of his fingers is steady and strong. Her skin is porcelain, her hair is silk, her parted lips a beacon like a lighthouse in a storm. "I love you."

He gives her no time to respond, but presses his lips to hers with a groan that comes from deep within his chest, tilts her face up with his hands so he can slant his mouth down across hers greedily. She is still, frozen for a long moment, but, on a sigh, she does pliant and soft against him, mouth pressing up against his. At the acceptance, he wraps his arms around her, pulling them so tightly together there is nothing between them but this feeling, swelling and beating in his chest so harshly that it is painful, that it feels like he is dying, like he can't breath.

They break apart with a gasp, panting breaths mingling between them, staring at each other. Lyanna is still lost, but still at ease, her chest rises and falls quickly, and a small, tremulous smile sits on the corner of her swollen lips. Rhaegar stares at her in wonder.

"My Lord – "

"Rhaegar."

She flicks her eyes downward in a sudden display of shyness. "Rhaegar." To watch his name tumble from her lips sets his blood churning. "Your wife – "

He presses a soft kiss against her lips to stop the words. "She is my wife in name only." He kisses each corner of her mouth, her chin, the tip of her nose, each fluttering eyelid. "You are the wife of my heart, always."

"Are you just going to sit there looking, my Lord?"

He starts at the voice, teasing, and slow and languid with sleep, and leans back as Lyanna rolls over so she can face him. She stares up at him, eyes soft and bright and glowing. When she stretches her arms over her head, the movement makes his eyes focus on her breast, bared with the motion and tantalizingly within reach. He watches her stretch, a predator watching his prey, watching the breath come faster with his scrutiny, watching the nipples harden into peaks as he watched. His pulse is thundering in his ears like hooves.

"Rhaegar…"

His name is a sigh, a plea, but he is already in motion, leaning down to press feather light kisses in a concentric trail around first one breast, then the other, always stopping just short of where Lyanna wanted him the most. She was shifting restlessly now, watching him with liquid eyes. He glanced up at her and quirked a brow in a cocky motion, and blew a breath of cool air across her nipples. She gasped, but still he avoided them, instead shifting so he could lean above her, in between the legs she parted invitingly. But no, he continued his slow worship, kissing across heaving stomach, dipping a tongue into her novel, pressing kisses down one leg and up the other. Her hands were clenched in the sheets, her thighs trembling. When she shifted her hips restlessly, he pressed them to the bed. She keened.

"Rhaegar… please…"

But he was resolute, continuing this slow torture with a purposeful intent. He trailed light fingertips across her downy thighs, followed with lips and tongue, until every breath of Lyanna's was a moan, a plea. When he reached the core of her womanhood, he continued his slow advance of caresses and touches, until felt her fall apart, his name on her lips. Her trembling hands reached up down to tangle in his hair, to pull him upwards, where she kissed him with desperation. He could not mark the moment when he slid inside her, but suddenly she was arching into him, pulling him deeper, closer, more.

His arms trembled, his shoulders ached with the need to go slowly. They would have a lifetime to have each other in all sorts of ways. The ribbon around his wrist was proof of that.

"My wife," he whispered against her skin as he rocked against her. "Wife of my heart." One hand fell from his hair and clenched in the ribbon trailing around them. "Wife of my soul." She pressed their mouths together, gentle and slow. "Mine."

"And you are mine." Her eyes flick upwards to his. "My husband, now, forever."

He presses his face against the curve of her throat, eyes clenched closed, overcome with the emotion that this woman elicits in him. He will write songs to her, ballads that the people of Westeros will sing for a thousand years. The people will sing of their love, bards will tell their story from one end of the kingdom to the other. As she shudders and breaks around him, as he tumbles over the edge with her, he vows it will be so.

The entire world would know of the love between Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.