Platonic Dark Father Ormund Hightower x Reader
The silk sheets of Oldtown were soft, but they belonged to a corpse.
You knew that better than anyone. Six months ago, the true daughter of Lord Ormund Hightower had succumbed to a silent, burning fever in the dead of night. She had drawn her last breath in a room lightened up by candlelight, and when her eyes opened again, it was you sitting up in her bed, a modern soul trapped in a world of fantasy.
You hadn't asked for any of this. You certainly hadn't asked to inherit the burden of the Green campaign, nor the suffocating behavior of a psychopathic father.
Honestly you have read the books, but you never imagined that Ormund would be a psychopath, and that Daeron The Daring is not 'Daring' at all but a meek boy in front of The lord of Oldtown
What is worse is that you have to deal with Ormund on a daily basis, there's no escape from that.
"Where is it?" His demands. "The pomander. The musk I had prepared for you, you're not wearing it."
You stared at him. "I— what?"
"The scent." He stressed out, but his eyes remained fixed on you. "I ordered a specific blend for you, bergamot, ambergris, a touch of clove. It was made to my specifications. I could smell it on you from across a room, and I enjoyed that. I told you to wear it daily."
The pomander, you remembered now, a little glass orb on a chain that had come with your wardrobe. You'd assumed it was just another accessory.
You stopped wearing it weeks ago because the clove gave you a headache.
"I didn't realize it was a requirement," you said carelessly. "I thought it was perfume."
"It was not perfume." His voice rose, and he stepped closer again, this time bringing his face within inches of yours. He inhaled once more, but in a more theatrical manner, like a man sampling a dish that had gone bad.
"I cannot abide this scent on you. It's wrong. You smell wrong. Like common soap and that cheap rosewater the maids use. I told you, the musk was for you. It marked you as mine."
Your stomach turned. The way he said marked you as mine, the possessive weight of it, the way he'd leaned in to sniff you like you were a whore he was considering purchasing, made something cold and greasy slide down your spine.
"Back up," you said, pushing your chair back a few inches. "You're too close."
Ormund didn't move. His expression changed, disbelief, and warring with outrage. "You're telling me to—"
"I'm telling you that you're standing in my personal space, and I don't like it. The scent is gone, because I stopped wearing it. If that's a problem, it's your problem."
Suddenly, Ormund grabs the sides of your head as if wondering whether to bash it against the wall behind you just like he did with your mother when she angered him.
But, again, he is too obsessed with you to let you go, to kill you, even his greed for power couldn't overcome this obsession.
He wished to we'd you to Daeron, it ensured that you would sit on the throne beside the future king, that his grandchildren through you would become kings.
"You will wear the pomander every day, and you will not make me seek you out to confirm that you're obeying, do you understand? I should not have to come to you like a hound tracking a scent. The fact that I can't smell you properly now, that you've removed what I gave you on purpose, tells me you're testing me."
"I'm not testing anything, I told you I don't like it."
"Then you will learn to like it." He reached into his pocket and produced a small glass vial, stoppered with silver. He held it up, and even from a few feet away, you could smell the clove and musk, heavy, cloying, nauseatingly strong.
"I keep a spare. Because I anticipated you might try something like this. Now" He uncorked it and extended it toward you.
"Apply it. Now. Before I lose my patience entirely."
You didn't take it. You just stared at him, at the vial, at the absolute certainty in his eyes that he had the right to dictate what you smelled like.
"You're creeping me out," you said, before you could stop yourself. "You know that, right? this is not normal, no father sniffs his daughter like she's a—"
"Don't finish that sentence." He snapped
"Don't you dare. I am the Lord of this house. I decide what is normal. I decide what you wear, what you eat, what you smell like. You are my daughter, and you will obey me in all things, or you will learn what disobedience costs."
Not because you wanted to, but because the way Ormund's fingers had tightened on your skull, the way his thumbs had pressed against your temples like he was testing the give of bone, had reminded you, with startling clarity, that you were not in a world where you could win every battle.
You were in a world where men like him killed girls like you and called it justice.
Ormund watched. His nostrils flared with satisfaction.
"There," he cooed, his voice softening into something almost paternal, which made it worse.
"That wasn't so hard, was it? Now go give your prayers to the Mother and thank her for having a merciful father like myself."
