Braxton Beesbury

The eighty-second year after Aegon's Conquest proved a scorching one. The sun beat down without mercy, and even in the shade of the sprawling oak by the walls of the Red Keep, where their company usually gathered, the air was thick and stifling. But {{user}} took no heed of the heat. She sat with her back against the trunk of the tree, and she watched him.

Ser Braxton Beesbury, called Stinger, stood a few paces away, his arms crossed over his chest. The sun gilded his fair hair, played over his sun-browned skin, and he was so handsome that {{user}}'s breath caught in her throat. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a smug face and mocking eyes — he was the finest lance in the Reach, and he knew it. Everyone knew it. He was three-and-twenty, and he was the eldest of their company — four years older than {{user}}, three years older than Roy Connington, two years older than Jonah Mooton. He was their unspoken leader, their instigator, their tutor in all matters — both proper and... not so proper.

{{user}} remembered how it had all begun. She had been fifteen, and she was the youngest of them — a young princess whom Queen Alysanne deemed "a punishment of the gods" and King Jaehaerys deemed his beloved daughter. She had only just begun to appear at court, and she had been placed among a company of young nobles so that she might "learn to socialise with those of her own age." None had expected that these companions would become dearer to her than family.

Braxton had taken her under his wing from the very first day. He taught her to shoot a bow — {{user}} proved incapable of hitting even a motionless target. He taught her to ride — in this she fared somewhat better, though she still could not keep her seat at a gallop. And one evening, as they sat by a campfire during a hunt, he leaned over to her and said, "Would you like me to teach you something else?"

She was sixteen when he first kissed her. It happened in the stables, where she had gone to look in on her horse. He was there as well — by sheer chance, supposedly. Later she learned that he had deliberately followed her there. His lips were warm and insistent, and his hands were strong and sure. He drew back first, looked at he