Chapter Text
As ordeals often go in the king’s royal household, the whole mess begins with Baela.
Baela. How can she be described, Jace wonders? She is infuriating. Headstrong, willful, far too convincing, devious. Certainly too bloody clever for her own good. Her father’s daughter, the same charming devil with all of Flea Bottom in her grasp—
“Well, then. Am I meant to undress myself?”
Her impatient, slightly amused voice snaps him from his thoughts. Jacaerys blinks.
“Oh. No, no. Let me.” He hastens to her side, tugging at laces gently and undoing buckles. Performing his husbandly duties. “Is there any change?”
“Any excuse for causing all this fuss, you mean?”
Eight moons gone in her pregnancy and still she remains as sharp as ever.. Baela never ceases to impress him. Or vex him.
“Baela,” he admonishes. “If I had asked that, that is what you would have heard. I asked an entirely different question, as you are well aware.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was not.”
“I could see it upon your face.”
Jace sighs to himself, busying his hands at Baela’s half-dozen layers. Meant to keep her warm—as though the dragon had any issue keeping warm—and gentle the heir in her belly. Not, of course, that the babe seems keen on being gentle. Rather, it kicks and slaps and turns about inside of her. It is truly the queerest thing, to see a hand or foot suddenly appear behind Baela’s brown skin stretched so thin. He cannot become used to it.
And now, with the day so near?
She should have stayed in King’s Landing.
Perhaps that is the thought she claims to see on his face, and in that she would not be wrong, nor are his feelings unknown to her. They fought on this, a true fight up to near the moment of their departure. Clearly, he relented. It is difficult to deny Baela. For one, she could keep arguing until all his energy was spent. At the break of fast. At Council. After petitions. During suppers. In bed. Let it not be said that his queen lacked for stamina, no, she was stubborn in spades. Like endless logs in a flame. That, and she had wanted to come, had asked him with her wide purple eyes as if she’d never asked for anything before.
I wish to see where my father died, Baela confessed, and Jacaerys had crumbled. For Harrenhal was impossible to avoid on the course of this progress, and it would have been so unbearably cruel to stand in her way. He relented, but he did not like it.
Which brings him to the moment.
The two of them alone, for Baela distrusted ladies’ maids not her own, making her husband and king the next best replacement to usher off all her layers. When she is in her shift with the bump at her belly stretched so far before her she cannot see her feet, Jace suddenly finds it quite difficult to remain annoyed with her.
She is so beautiful, round with their babe. He tells her so.
“Silver-tongued lord,” she teases, easing her way to the chaise with his aid. “Now that you have been sweet to me, shall you also be honest?”
“You are insistent on picking a fight with me, my lady,” he says dryly, moving to pour them wine. “We do not control when the babe threatens to come, although admittedly this is… earlier than I expected.”
That worries him, of course. Only a scare, Baela swears. Bedrest until the child comes and she should have never left her home in her late hour, the maesters agree. Jace had sent for Gerardys or perhaps one of his understudies yet all that was left for them now was to sit, and pray, and wait.
Sit. Pray. Wait.
In Harrenhal.
Her voice is hardly above a whisper when she replies. “You know this was not my intention, Jace.”
He sighs again, catching the fading sunlight through a small window in the Kingspyre tower that housed them. “I know, Baela.”
“You might make the best of it.”
Enough, he wishes to reprimand, put the matter away. He does not wish to discuss it with her nor has he ever, as she well knows, yet his wife cannot resist barreling forward when the opportunity presents itself.
“Lord Harwin was most welcoming upon our shabby arrival.”
“Indeed,” Jace agrees, stepping closer to her. “You must rest, my queen. You have slept so little of late and even when you do, the hours are too few. Rest, darling, I will have us food sent.”
“Ah—”
“We will be here for two moons at the least,” Jace presses a finger to her lips, offering a smile. “There is much time to have discussions. Sleep now.”
“Alright,” she groans. “If you insist.”
“I do,” he whispers against her temple, sending her into the dream world with a kiss.
Would that he could quiet his own mind so easily.
There is a certain feeling of serenity in one’s own smallness that a man feels when he stares up at the cloudless sky, or sits a boat in the middle of the sea. Jace never felt it so strongly as the days he spent flying from Dragonstone to the Vale. It was humbling and lonely, being so close to the stars with naught but his thoughts—Vermax was there, but Vermax was not company, so to speak. She’d been part of him. If not his blood, then his rushing pulse.
Regardless, Jacaerys had sat her back and stared down at the whole wide world full of trees and rivers, realizing for the first time just how large, how empty it all was. There were no ears about each corner. He crossed over towns in barely ten breaths. It was peaceful, in it’s own way, the vastness. Hope in his heart.
Harrenhal, in contrast, boasts no such feeling. Despite being hosted in damn near an entire wing of the place, Jace still feels suffocated. Baela slumbers (although no doubt she would wake soon) and the castle’s occupants offer little comfort so he clambers higher up the tower, until it is possible to stand over and see the entire yard. Perhaps even to the God’s Eye, on a good day. Alas, it was night, and he could see nothing.
Isn't that an appropriate metaphor? Jacaerys standing far above. The unknowable realm below.
My realm, and myself within it, blind as a bat to all its mysteries.
Perhaps there would be no solace in his own company either.
He’d had a shock today, Jace consoles himself, the memory of Baela’s doubled over figure near sending him into the Stranger’s hall. In the worst part of him, Jacaerys had bargained with the Gods that if she lost the child, she lost the child—so long as it was not her. A thousand children of his blood could not replace that woman in his family, in his heart. Tempestuous, brilliant, spontaneous, wild. Restless and inescapable. Baela the Burnt, the Bold. His first and last.
From where he stands, the wind howls like so many wounded warriors reaching out towards him. There is water beneath him, and beneath that surface somewhere is buried the bones of Caraxes, fearsome as flame; of Vhagar, goddess of war. Those, and the skulls of the two princes who rode them.
They'd had the common sense to die with their dragons, at least. Jace had been stupid enough to think he could live without his.
Gods be good, how was Jacaerys meant to heal the realm when he could not even see where it was bleeding from? He had never studied at the Citadel—he would likely never step foot in Oldtown—yet it fell to him to be father, maester, septon, commander, and more to the Seven Kingdoms. Once, he could have flown over these lands, seen them for what they were. And now what is he, a dark-haired dark-eyed Targaryen with no dragon?
Whatever he may be, there is little he can do on a dark night in a stranger’s castle—and would that Lord Harwin were a stranger, yet he is nothing of the sort. All that is left to Jacaerys is to listen to the screams.
They overtake him, or perhaps he lets them, either way when Lord Manderly comes to speak his piece, Jace is found in a state of deep contemplation.
Jacaerys has long since ceased apologizing for frightening the man, although he does feel a hint of guilt for forcing his stout Hand to climb so many stairs. Nonetheless, Lord Torrhen does his duty admirably, without complaint, which is more than can be said for certain other members of the Small Council.
“Your Grace,” the man blusters, clearing his throat powerfully. “My King, my regrets for interrupting, I bring you news of the… changes to the progress. We have of course, sent swift ravens to all those houses to which your presence was expected. That is, Stone Hedge, Raventree Hall, Riverrun… Lady Sabitha is said to be hosted by the young Tully so she has been apprised, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
“There is, of course, the matter of Lord Stark and his retinue… three riders have been sent, yet it may be that their arrival within Raventree Hall will precede our reaching them…”
Lord Stark, yes. Cregan. Jace does not know whether to fall to his knees and praise the Gods or curse them for delaying their reunion. To be able to greet him one father to another, king to subject, instead of whatever else they once were. (They are not those fools any longer, or they cannot afford to be.)
“If I may, your Grace?” Manderly manages, a sure sign that he is about to give Jacaerys unasked for counsel. Not unwelcome, no; perhaps the Hand was a bit too fatherly for the nature of their relationship, but Jace is accustomed to men seeing their sons and their futures in him.
“You may, my Lord.”
“It is no easy thing, yet it falls to me to speak thus to you. ‘Tis a matter of the young prince, sire. He has not shown… interest, in the proceedings as they have been. It was one matter when the Queen was available to keep him occupied, yet now that she is in an early confinement I fear the boy has appeared a bit…”
“A bit what?” Jace prompts.
“Lost, mayhaps. There is a sentiment that his silent presence might be a bit, how might I say... unsettling? If you would forgive my presumption. That perhaps he would be more at ease within the walls of the Red Keep.”
Aegon is not a boy of many words or expressions, as Jacaerys and Baela are well aware. Appropriately concerned by, if endlessly understanding of him. Their mother left each of her sons unique burdens to bear, never one to let a child feel left out. Aegon carries his in silence.
However, it is Jacaerys who has turned down half a hundred offers for Aegon to squire here, foster there. If there is any relief in knowing that he, the eldest, was spared the sight of Rhaenyra’s final moments—defiant to the end, Jace has been told, should that please His Grace—then it is a solace he refuses. His favorite pain is indulging the sweet torture of keeping his broken little brother by his side.
“We are not unaware of this,” Jacaerys dismisses. “The Prince Aegon travels wherever the Queen and myself do. I would not hear more on the matter, my lord.”
“As you say, your Grace,” Lord Manderly bows away.
Jacaerys does not linger much louder, leaving the ghosts to themselves.
“Jace, Jace.”
He is shaken awake at an hour even the rooster refuses. Again.
“I am awake,” he mumbles, barely opening his eyes to throw an arm over Baela’s body beside his. Tugs at her a bit to fix the angle, not that Baela thanks him for it, for there is no comfortable position to be found for her these nights.
“Your warrior is practicing her drills once more.”
“Is she now?” he breathes, enjoying the brief seconds of softness his wife allows him before she loses patience. “Silly girl, torturing your mother and father so when all we have done is love you.”
“Torturing you, is she?”
“We are the both of us awake, no?”
“You most reluctantly! Do you believe I enjoy knowing that only your voice calms her? Gods be damned, Jace, I have had no rest —”
“I know,” he soothes to the her neck, no kissing for that would only irritate her further at this moment. “I know, my love. Lie back now. I shall take my cares.” He does lay lips upon her belly—that much is allowed him insofar as it is more for the child than the mother—rubbing his face to seek out an errant foot or hand. A heel glances off of his chin at one point, a motion he follows until he is as close to the babe’s ear as he believes he can be.
“Sweet girl,” he sighs dreamily, still half asleep. Pauses and taps the skin above. “If you are a girl, of course. Your mother is quite sure. Should you be born differently, please accept my apologies in advance.”
“She will be a girl,” Baela swears.
“Only covering each angle,” he promises. “Now, where was I? Ah yes, you being born. Now tell me, shall you give the Queen an easy time of it? I pray you do, that would be most delightful to your sires. For you are not so big yet. You will grow, I have been told, but for some time you shall remain a tiny thing with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes.”
“Hopefully.”
Baela’s hand strokes through his hair, after he raises it to his lips to kiss; acknowledging that all he will have is owed to her, her body growing their little miracle. It was two years of trying every night they could, the joy of lovemaking nearly vanished by the time they succeeded. Blessedly, whatever they had lost they rediscovered in the first few moons of her belly rounding, the royal couple fucking so shamelessly that they could hardly look their own Kingsguard in the eyes. This babe saved us, Jace knows. Has given them a reason to have hope again in the mire of post-war politics they’d been thrust into.
“There is so much we shall do with you once you are with us, sweetling. There will be milk and honey for you to feed upon, and soft blankets, and little puppies, kittens. Whatever you like best. A dragon egg in your cradle as well, won’t that be exciting?”
(It must hatch as well, this much they all knew. For there was no older dragon for new babes to claim should it not.)
“Other fat babes for you to play with. Shoulders for you to spit upon, as my brothers once spit upon mine. I was not hardly four the first time my grandfather sat me upon his knee on the Iron Throne, shall I do the same with you at three? That is to be yours one day, child, as everything I have to give will be yours.”
Perhaps it is the lack of sleep that compels him, the nervous tension over the babe, over Harrenhal, over the babe being born in Harrenhal but Jacaerys finds himself speaking wistful words he would usually guard. “The same as my mother gave me. We shall play the same games of hiding and seeking, learn your letters upon the pages of illuminated tales. Shallow pools built that you may learn to swim at your father’s hands, as I did mine own. Pleasure rides at sail. Upon horses as well, when we leave the city, galloping through the kingswood as fast as your mother will allow.” They both chuckle, for it is ever more likely that Baela will be the one racing, and Jacaerys the one clutching at his garments.
“A wooden rocking horse until you are old enough for a wooden sword. When you have mastered that, a small dagger whose use you will know, that you may help in hunts, skinning rabbits and such. If the sight of blood discomforts you, then to cut flowers to be brought to your loving mother. Will you like all that? Those were the joys of my own childhood, you see.”
All the love he could have imagined, could have wished for. It shaped him, those gestures, made him whole once. It built his first family in the safe walls of Rhaenyra’s chambers where the hearth was always flickering and the window always faced the nearby dragon lairs. His mother, his father. And him.
“They loved you very much. He loved you very much,” Baela whispers. She is honest in ways he has always found difficult. To be, to swallow. To live without. There is no question of the he she refers to.
“He is not as I remember him.”
Her sharp laugh clashes with his half-slumber. “The rest of us are?”
“Nay. Yet I am perhaps the only one old and alive enough to remember it as it once was. That cannot be escaped.”
A long moment passes in which he hardly dares breathe, before Baela’s exhale gives him permission to inhale. “You are not the only one locked in the prison of memory, husband. We all paid a price.”
And will keep paying it, he thinks, but the hour is late and all this conversation accomplishes is to keep them from sleeping. Instead of responding, he shifts upwards to nuzzle at her cheek with a hand spanned over her belly. “That may be so, yet I have you, do I not? You and the child we prayed for. She shall be more spectacular than we can imagine, Baela, she shall be a healing. This babe of ours is more than a princess or prince. They are a beacon.”
Baela plays along. “And myself? If my child is a beacon, then what am I?”
He kisses her knuckles. “You are the love of my life.” Her cheek. “A pain in my arse.” Her nose. “Baela Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.” Her eyelids. “And you need to rest.” Her welcoming lips—everything he needs to shut the world away.
The last time Jacaerys saw Lord Harwin Strong of Harrenhal, he was still Jacaerys Velaryon. Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, for though his mother the Queen and uncle the Usurper King had both perished, Jace had not yet been formally crowned. There were already those who named him my King as he passed them, clad in the armor none of them had ceased to wear; words of mockery to his ears, even when they were meant sincerely.
The Dragonpit still smoked, the people still starved, the highborn eyed one another in distrust. A city full of soldiers come too late and dragonslayers. Jacaerys railed against that line of thought, to be sure. He could not afford to fall prey to the anger building up a storm inside of him, could not spare the time to mourn his own, could not do this, could not do that; what could he do?
Sit the tribunal, was the answer. Lord Cregan whispering in one ear, Lord Corlys in the other. It was enough to drive any five-and-ten year old mad.
One hand on his shoulder. Weep here, boy, as you cannot in front of them. Jacaerys had been reduced by it, in that moment, a child again. Seven seas of grief overtaking him, the end of a thousand childhoods, ashes in the air. An arm around him as he shook violently.
The next day, for better or for worse, he rose as a man.
Welcomed Prince Daeron into the city in chains that Jace let fall with his own scabbed and scarred hands.
In the dark of night, he presses his forehead to the heir in his wife’s womb. With none to see or hear, no stars to witness him, no softly breathing Vermax to balm his heart, only here can he apologize. Forgive me this inheritance, he pleads. All I can give you is better than I had. A mother and father whose love need not wilt with the dawn.
Harwin Strong lost his left arm to Harrenhal’s terrible teeth, yet still he sits in her cavernous mouth. Who else would dance with dragons, if not a man who made his home in the jaws of a beast?
Older, wearier, but still a face so familiar; of course it is familiar! Jace spent years at the man’s side! Underfoot, on his back, ever searching for him in crowds. Jace was knighted kneeling before him, stood his vigil with the bloody cuts left by the man’s Valyrian Steel still wet upon his shoulders. Here and now, there will be no kneeling.
It should be said that Lord Harwin does try. Stands from his seat and makes to bend but Jacaerys reaches before he can. Hand on his shoulder. Forbidding him from doing this, for it is not his right.
“Your Grace,” Harwin grunts, “might I not swear my fealty to my liege lord? The years have kept me from performing my duty.”
Jacaerys speaks loudly for the whole hall to hear, not that it takes much with the hush that has fallen. It reminds him of something Prince Daeron declared in council once, a rare show of fire behind his normally placid eyes. They are greedy as newborn chicks, these boy lords; left only to scream for their next bite with no memory of the egg. Mother had some wisdom of that ilk as well, although it had gone differently. Something in High Valyrian. If an animal spits venom, it is acting by it's nature. When a man spits venom, it is because his body is full of poison. Where the animal began and the man ended, now that was a question of some contention.
Jacaerys had invited that same prince upon this progress as well. Daeron had declined, perhaps in protest at being paraded around as a show of peace. Struck Jace as passing unfair. He was exhausted as well, but made the effort to show his uncle this little mercy of choice nonetheless. A thousand and one little mercies, all expected of him, as though he was made of the stuff.
“You have done your duty and more, my lord. Harrenhal free of Aemond the Kinslayer's creatures after two years is no small feat, and for this the crown both applauds and thanks you for your service. Your sacrifice moves us, Lord Strong.”
“As your favor in visiting our keep does us, liege,” Harwin nods his head respectfully, turns to boom over the hall. “Oh my people, will you not cheer for your lord? King Jacaerys, First of His Name, and his beautiful Queen honor us with their presence, yet you remain silent as mice!”
There is yelling and shouting then, a renewed call for blackened bacon and nutty bread that somehow fills even the Hall of a Hundred Hearths. Jacaerys finds himself with a tankard of mead before the din has quietened, in a seat by the head of the raised table.
“Is the Queen at ease?” Lord Harwin asks, breaking a sheet of ice between them.
“She is as best she can be,” Jace concedes. “We do thank you for your hospitality, my lord, it is no small thing to my lady and I.”
“The honor is mine, of course. To have the firstborn of the new generation born within these walls… it fills me with joy.”
There is an opening, there, for Jacaerys to reflect back the beaming smile he receives. To say yes it does feel right, does it not and we share this joy and am I still your son although you are not my father?
Refrains, naturally. He could never speak so brazenly. This is all happening too fast, Jace despairs. He needs air.
“You have become grey in the years we have been parted, my lord,” he says, for there is silver lined in Lord Harwin's thick browns. Laughs lines; all dignified. Harwin Strong is yet a handsome man but a life lived has written itself onto his skin.
“I have the privilege of growing old, liege. A privilege not all have been blessed with.”
Does he expect that I will grieve with him? “This cannot be argued. We pray that my family and I are blessed with the same.”
“Undoubtedly, you will be! You are surrounded by your loyal supporters and those whose hearts are bound to you by love, honor, and duty all. These leal lords will see you safe throughout your life.”
“Would that leal lords were always in such great supply,” Jacaerys smiles tightly and cringes a beat later. Such a silly thing to say, to show his hand, lay bare his gripes—
“We did not know, liege,” Harwin says so sorrowfully it could be a song. We did not know, we did not know, we did not know. “Forgive us, if you can. We never thought it would come to what it did.” We did not know. They should have known, Jace wishes he was naïve enough to believe, but he is not. He fought in that same war, sat those same war councils, buried those same dead. Nobody could have done better and that truth aches like a festering wound.
“We learned, Jace,” the man whispers, wearing regret on his face and ending the King’s pensive silence. Jace. Said so easily… it was far too familiar. Jacaerys casts a glance around, to see if it was heard.
“I was told you spend your morns in the training yard, my lord,” he hastily re-routes, “that even without your arm, you strike a formidable presence still. Why is that, I ask? We live in peacetimes.”
“Peace, aye,” Lord Strong grunts, helping himself to a swig of ale. “Peace we paid for. I pledge my life to it, Ja—”
“It will not come to that again,” Jace breathes. His eyes surely flash hard. “Or do you hold doubt in the capability of my administration, my lord of Harrenhal?”
A moment slips by. Two masks slide into place, a tenuous thread stretching out like one of so many stitches holding him together; his life, his crown, his marriage, it is all scales and balances, shimmering gold weights that snatch and steal. Harwin leans backwards to coolly gaze at Jacaerys, ale at his lips. “On the contrary. I hold every faith, your Grace. All men lust for peace and harmony, and the womenfolk twice over.”
“Your daily sparring would suggest otherwise,” Jace says tartly. Three years a king, nine-and-ten and blooded in battle. Soon he would be a father, he need not waste his time being a son.
“Liege,” the man speaks in iron tones. “I trust your peace. In turn, you may trust that I will defend it.”
(It is not until the break of fast is concluded and Jacaerys seeking out the solar opened for him that he realizes his hands are still shaking.)
With nothing to be done beyond wait for Baela’s labors to arrive, the men go hunting.
Jacaerys joins them with strict instructions left behind that Baela should, under no circumstances, give birth in his absence. She seems to accept that well enough, which is the first cause of relief for Jace on the first day of the three-day venture.
The second is the absence of Harrenhal’s lord from the party that departs the gates. He’d begged off using the excuse of his missing arm, making him of little use in the goings on of stalking, killing, and skinning. Jace remembers otherwise— one hand wield by a god of war soaked in his own blood, shieldless, death defiant—but does not protest the matter.
He does, however, insist Aegon be at his side. Unlike others, his brother’s silence does not bother him.
“This is a fair day for hunting,” Jacaerys tells the boy as they ride forth. Aegon blinks in the way that means he is listening. “There will be plenty to be done. You may ride out with me, if you like, or join the scouting party should you desire. Won’t that be fun? The master-at-arms tells me you have become quite diligent with the bow as well as your sword.”
“If he says so, then I suppose I am,” Aegon mumbles unenthusiastically. Jacaerys does not take it personally.
“Did you add your portion to my letter to Lady Rhaena? She will be quite excited to receive it, you know. I would even say she may visit, although in her state...”
“Now that her babe is dead?”
“Not dead,” Jace says, a bit harsher than he intended. “No, Aegon, it did not die. It was stillborn. Never lived. A tragedy to be sure but these things, they happen as the Gods will it. We must show gratitude that Rhaena is a strong woman whose constitution improves.”
“Does that mean Baela’s babe will be stillborn too?”
Jacaerys is yanking at his reins before he even realizes what he is doing, wheeling his horse in a half circle. Aegon blinks at him with their mother's eyes. When he grasps the reins to Aegon's horse, the boy stares warily. “No. Do not say that again Aegon, ever. Not in front of me, not in front of the Queen, am I clear? This babe is not the same as Rhaena’s.” He swallows down the stinging at the back of his throat. “Our babe will live, do you understand? It will be born hale and Baela shall recover swiftly. You will tell me now if anyone has spoken otherwise to you.”
(Is that what was happening behind his back? After all the sacrifice, they would not even allow him the decency of well-wishes upon his firstborn? Gods be good, Jace had never wished to be done with this whole progress so terribly as he does this moment—)
“Nobody has,” Aegon answers dully. “I only thought that Baela and Rhaena are twins who do all else the same as one another.”
Jacaerys relaxes by a touch. With Aegon, the way he is mute when he pleases and stingy with his words otherwise, it is oft difficult to know just what he thinking. Jace hedges bets, mostly, and it may very well be those bets are wrong but in this case, he has a hunch of what the issue is.
“Aegon,” he leans in, their saddles brushing when he reaches over to gently touch the younger’s arms. “This babe is a good thing, do you know that? We are so happy to welcome the child, yet nothing will change between you and I.” Tilts his chin up so their eyes meet. “You are my brother. I love you with my entire heart, as does Baela. This shall always, always be true. There shall ever be space for you at our sides.”
There is a pause with the sounds of men and trees speaking behind them, but finally Aegon nods his head. “I know this, your Grace. I hope to be a good uncle to your babe as well, the prince or princess.”
“We believe it will be a princess,” Jace says without thinking. The sun shines when Aegon smiles, and the world is set to rights for the briefest flash.
Unfortunately, the moment is lost soon after, swallowed by the hundred and one noblefolk and knights and peasants who wish for a moment of his time. He gives them each the least time possible, not enough to please them yet not enough to insult them either. Only the sunset grants him rest, Lord Manderly’s insistence that His Grace retire in preparation for the days that follow, scattering the various supplicants better than the wind could scatter seeds.
What follows is three days of merry slaughter.
“His Grace is inspired by his impending fatherhood!”
He should be with Baela.
“Will the King not honor me by allowing my son squire him this day? A dutiful boy, he will serve you well.”
They believe their insults of Aegon to be well concealed.
“Our gracious King is consumed with thoughts of his lady wife, leave him be you fool!”
Had she slept at all after his departure?
“One would be forgiven for thinking the King intends to birth the heir from his own body,” the slithering tones of Lady Sabitha ink through the air, repelling the crowd by ten paces. She had ridden from Riverrun when news came of the delay to the progress. Arrived in the royal pavilion in boiled riding leathers, armed with a leather riding crop and a widow's peak sharp as an arrowhead. Shunted her cape on the floor in some permanent disgust. Jacaerys is taller than her now, which he had not been at ten and six.
“Most fortunately, I do not bear that burden,” Jace says quietly, itching at the corners of his smile. Her gown is buttoned to her throat yet he finds himself to be itching at the neck—Harrenhal was said to make the powers of witches strong and mighty, was it not?
“I have heard that the Queen’s party is sorely lacking in attendants,” the woman accuses him with a stare. “I have in my employ my own maid, whom the Queen is most welcome to. Perhaps my own services should she wish.”
And where did you hear that, you frightful bitch? “My wife faces the common discomforts of a woman’s confinement, my lady Frey. Your care for your Queen moves me to assure you that she is well looked after.”
If Baela had not found herself a maid or three she could stand, Jacaerys would never have come on this useless endeavor, reflexively courting and praising his highborn companions. Jace does not begrudge her this pickiness. The maids who had locked her away upon Dragonstone upon threat of death were to blame for it, nobody else.
“I have never known the Queen to be shy.”
Does she think Baela to be tied up in some dungeon? “This is the first Her Grace has experienced the birthing chambers. You must forgive her reticence, Lady Sabitha, her mind is too preoccupied for courtesies.”
“All the more reason for her to have a few experienced women about her, hm? These are delicate matters.” She leans in, the smell of blood and rot mingling between them. “I have always been so terribly fond of the Queen Baela, your Grace. It would pain me beyond words to see ill befall her that I might prevent.”
Jacaerys tamps down a sneer from the insolence. “You honor me by saying so. I shall hasten to raise the matter with the Queen upon my return.”
Only Baela is no-fucking-where to be found, upon his party’s return.
“Escort the Prince to his chambers,” he orders Ser Massey, the Kingsguard Aegon seems to like the best and therefore is assigned to most of the time.
“Find her!” he yells at the rest, hurtling through the hearth hall, the Kingspyre Tower, in a frenzy of movement. She is one heavily pregnant woman, how fucking far could she have gone? In his panic he upends a serving girl, although his courtesies are not so far gone that he does not offer assistance in raising her once more. Her words of thanks are lost upon him in exchange for one thousand violent promises spinning in his mind, each worse than the last, should he discover her taken.
With the sun in the sky threatening to descend, he finally finds her.
(But not alone.)
“What is the meaning of this!” he spits, “the Queen is meant to be abed, how dare you—”
Ser Harwin raises a single finger to his lips. Resting easy at the base of a monstrous Heart Tree, his sword glistens with oil where it sits across his massive thighs. Almost against his will Jace’s words die in his throat. An old instinct to listen, to quiet when he is shushed.
“The Queen sleeps,” the man speaks softly from behind a warm smile, rising steadily. A breeze kisses the leaves; Jace's anger bleeds out of him, so at odds with the serenity of the surroundings that he cannot maintain it. “She finds peace here.”
A breath of wonder escapes him. “She does? How long has she slept?”
“A turn of the hour, perhaps two. Under my watch. Your lady is safe.”
“Good, good. That… that is good.”
Baela is sleeping, he finds when he steps closer on the lightest foot he can manage with blood still rushing into his ears. There are sticks and leaves in her silver curls despite the shawl bunched up into a pillow beneath her. Chest rising, a range of hills beneath the mountain of her belly. Dressed in seagreen and barefoot.
Jacaerys is pulled to her as the waves of the sea are pulled to the shore.
“She has not… not been able to find respite of late. The child, it menaces her.”
“Children are wont to be menaces when they are so close,” Harwin chuckles. “Forgive them, it will not be the last time they make your lives difficult. Yet you will love them for it.”
“Do you speak of me?” Jacaerys asks in surprise.
He had been old enough to remember seeing several of his siblings born, and each time had done his best to assist his mother in her efforts. He was his mother’s child, yes, but he’d been more than just a brother to his brothers… he’d been one of his mother’s strongest allies by the end, in fighting and raising his siblings, and he still thinks of himself in those terms. Rarely does he consider the ways in which he’d also been a troublesome thing.
“My mother, I mean,” he amends quickly, at the odd look that erupts on Lord Strong’s face. “She never mentioned carrying me to be particularly difficult. You were there, I presume. Her sworn shield.”
“There, aye. It is Lucerys I speak of, in truth. You were as easy a pregnancy and birth as any child could have been, your Grace. Always a joy to my princess—my apologies, that is, the queen.”
It is Lucerys he speaks of? Impossible. Lucerys is not. Only was. Lucerys is chained to the past, ever ten and three, ever far from home, ever drowning, ever terrified. Just as some part of Jacaerys is ever in the Vale, hearing the news for the first time. Departing on Vermax, all of him screaming to turn towards home until he remembered his vows and flew North instead. There he would find Cregan Stark waiting for him; his kin in rage, mentor in violence, lover in desperation.
“Luke, he—”
“He was loved,” Harwin says firmly. There is a home there, in the thick arm that surrounds Jace without prompt. There is something as familiar as air in lungs, as rain in spring, in the beard that scratches at his forehead when he leans forward, when he forgets himself for an instant. “He knew, Jacaerys. How could he not?”
“You weren’t there,” Jace spills the rot that lives in his chest, taking a step back as if dragged by an invisible hand. By a ghost. “You could not know. You were not there.”
“Was I not? A part of me was, surely. Just as a part of you was. You worried for him as you worry for this wife of yours now, do you think nobody can see this? A King you are, first of your name, yet you were once a mere lad hanging from my arm, your brother from the other, in some grand jest.”
He was, yes. The floor is dragonflame! they use to scream, hurling themselves onto Ser Harwin’s body for he was the strongest man they knew and he would never allow them to fall, never.
“You had more arms to swing from, then.”
Harwin’s face twists as he rolls his shoulder, the phantom limb hanging heavy between them. “I used to have more, yes. Now I only have one.”
Just so. Jace wonders if the Gods are not laughing from their porch in the heavens.
“This child is… it does not go as planned. In truth, her Grace should not have travelled so late in the term, yet when she is infected with an idea, she becomes too damn—”
“—stubborn,” Harwin finishes. “Naught to dissuade her. Many a woman like that in the world, to be sure. We should be so lucky to know and love them.”
Jacaerys nods, taking in Baela’s slumbering form. At rest this way, he wants to curl up beside her, as the commons do on warm days when their work is finished. No fear for her life or health due to a babe Jace had the audacity to put inside of her.
“She cannot find adequate comfort in which to rest, I fear.”
“Yet she has found it now, has she not? I find it prudent to follow the woman’s lead in these matters. We are mere guests invited beyond the curtain of womanhood’s unique tribulations, never more.”
“Follow a woman's lead in these matters? Or all matters?”
An innocent jape, yet mayhaps a touch too familiar. It hangs in the air like the last ray of yellow sunshine before the world fades to blue and black. A curtain, drawn over the visible day into the impenetrable night. A curtain Baela draws, when she rouses a feather’s length into the world of the living. “Jace? Is that you?” she mumbles with her eyes closed. Knowing his presence instinctually.
“No, no,” he protests softly, at her side and kneeling in an instant. “Sleep, my love, sleep. You looked so peaceful, do not trouble yourself.”
Ser Harwin excuses himself in the background, slipping away and taking a certain languid sense with him, replaced with the slightly frantic energy humming about Jacaerys. The grass is velvet, however, and the godswood forgiving of his anxious emotions. Baela maneuvers into his arms easily enough, and the babe does no more than a soft kick hello when Jacaerys places his palm upon her belly.
“Did you hunt?” she asks, lolling as though her mouth is full of honey. Jace cannot resist kissing her; sweet, indeed.
“Hunted, killed, cooked. Please, Baela, do not wake. We shall stay here, you and I, until the stars come to greet us.”
“Is that what stars do? Here I thought they took no note of us.”
“How could they not?” he chuckles, relishing how her curls tickle his nose in this closeness between them. “Of myself, it may be true, yet of you? Impossible. Nothing could ignore you.”
Baela clicks her tongue and the babe kicks again, so low in her belly that it could not possibly be long now. “Oh Jace, I just had such a beautiful dream. I was younger and yet unburnt, rising in the sky to meet the usurper on Moondancer’s back.”
“Gods, Baela,” Jace chokes out. She’d nearly died that day.
“It was a good dream,” she insists, slurring. “Moondancer was there. Seven Hells, my father had no mercy on this tree, did he? It weeps and weeps, hasn’t stopped since I first came. Do you ever dream of Vermax?”
Does he dream of Vermax? His first love Vermax with her big blinking eyes and her delighted shrieks whenever anything happened, it was all so exciting to her, his curious girl. Forever snapping at Jace’s siblings who reached to her with sticky hands, although she never did more than threaten to nip them.
“Vermax is in all of my dreams just the same as I am,” he says carefully. The thirteen scars on the weirwood bleed in imperfect rhythm. “She was—is—a part of me.”
“Yes, Moondancer is the same. I feel the heat of her scales between my thighs, always chafing at me. But there is peace here in this place. She rests. A place for even dragons to be at ease.”
So it would seem. Prince Daemon had waited here thirteen days, for Aemond the Kinslayer to make his appearance. Notched the count in the Heart Tree of the twenty acre godswood as if he knew his beloved Baela would rest her eyes upon it one day. As if telling her that what he’d done was deliberate, that his resolve was only hardened at each sunrise, and that he’d no regrets. No mercy. If that was his final wish, it was good he was dead. All Jacaerys had done was show mercy. Listened to pleas for mercy, granted them in ways that felt like his spine was drinking itself. Even Lord Harwin… even he had done so.
For all that he is, he is my brother yet. Should you desire his head I shall send it to you, your Grace, but let him die in the place he was born. Cregan had not liked that. Traitors to the crown must die. Were you leal you would only ask the honor of taking his life yourself, as a show of your devotion.
As though she can read his thoughts (which he is not convinced she cannot), Baela speaks softly. “He was quite kind to me these past days, Lord Harwin. Most attentive. A good man.”
“Have I ever said otherwise?” Jace grouses.
Baela stares at him. He stares back. She-devil, he sighs to himself, sitting up to stroke her cheek and pluck various forest debris from her curls.
“Baela, sweetling, here more than most places you are reminded of your Targaryen father who gave you grief. Well I had a Targaryen mother who gave me no less.” She raises an eyebrow at him; that explanation does not satisfy. “I know she loved me dearly, that she was proud of me, the way she raised me up. I know… Gods, of course I know. Whatever part of my heart is not yours is hers. She is the one person I cannot…”
“Reconcile with?” Baela suggests. “Stop missing?”
“Something,” he confesses vaguely. It is not forgiveness, certainly. There is something that lurks deeper in dark waters than simple forgiveness, which like a stream leading itself to a river, is often a natural progression over time. If Jace were angry with Rhaenyra, the anger would not have lasted. It would have faded away. Thus it must be something else.
“She was lonely,” he says. “The crown is an isolating thing by nature. She must have needed him to help her bear it. He completed for her something precious, something of love that only my royal sires and Ser Harwin understood. Yet she did not… she did not give me a chance to understand.” To know where my brothers and I came from. “Neither Ser Harwin nor Ser Laenor. Both of them were sacrificed for the sake of her claim. What choice did she have?”
“I doubt it was something she knew how to speak to you of,” Baela says airily, stretching long. Toes curling into the welcoming moss. “As my own lord father knew not how to speak to my of my mother. It is not quite the same, though,” Baela shrugs, relaxed and unabashed. “I have the blessing of Rhaena. Never did I need to learn what it was to be completed by another, for I was born with half of my soul walking beside me.”
“Yes,” Jacaerys agrees in pure melancholy. “If Luke and Joff remained to me, no doubt I would not feel so strongly as I do. Whatever it is that I feel.”
“And yet, I see them in their brother and their sire. The men, lords, husbands they might have been. Lovely thought to think.” His wife ends the conversation there with her arm thrown over his neck, tugging him downwards; evidently bored of his half-answers. “Speaking of lord husbands,” she mumbles against his mouth after a few moments of letting him affectionately lick into hers. “Do you remember what Gerardys said might help bring the babe about?”
“Dornish foods,” Jace replies dutifully, rubbing at her back with a free hand, absorbed in the soft velvet of her lips. “Is that your wish?”
“Perhaps. What else?”
He smiles into her neck. “Hm. What else? Tell me.”
“You forgot,” she accuses.
“I am a fool,” he agrees, massaging the back of her neck. She moans in satisfaction, which warms his heart. Along with another part of his body that is most inappropriately announcing itself.
“You remembered,” she sighs breathily, rubbing her thigh against the fabric of his breeches. Oh yes, that. The maester had said that, had he not? That Baela’s pleasure would be… conducive to the labor, should it prove stubborn.
“What, here? Baela, we cannot.”
“Shall we go, then? To our chambers. We can bathe, Jace, just think of it, the two of us in one of those Pentoshi tubs. How I love those baths. But you may touch me a bit here still, won’t you? I want you, husband. I have been wanting you.”
“Baela,” he whispers. “Baela, think of the babe.”
Her purple eyes flatten. “We shouldn’t,” he tries. “What if she… what if she can feel it?”
“What if I can feel it?”
“Yes I know you will feel it, but is it not a bit odd, with her so close? I, I do not see—”
Baela pushes herself up, brows furrowed together. Jacaerys cringes; he has most definitely said the wrong thing. “You do not see? No, you do not! The babe this, the babe that. Do you see me, Jace? Do you ever see me anymore?”
“Baela,” he protests, but she gives him her back and, oh Gods, she is sniffling! Baela hardly ever cries, her tears have always served to make him feel the darkest of villains, to make him despise himself.
“Go away,” she cries, “I want to sleep now.”
“My love, I am so sorry, come now, if you want to we might still—”
“No! Leave me be. I must sleep for the babe, and eat for the babe, and you can send the maids to attend the babe. You go away, I have had enough of your company.”
He all but begs when he wraps his arms around her, lacing her legs between his in a tight grip. “Let me hold you, Baela. I am sorry, of course I see you, I should have listened.” I find it prudent to follow the woman’s lead in these matters, Lord Harwin had said earlier. Was it a warning? “Do not send me away, Baela. You know I hate being away from you.”
“I am lonely too,” she despairs. “This pregnancy has made me the loneliest person in the world. I am invisible now, unseen beyond the bump at my belly.”
“No, never,” Jace swears, a dagger in his heart. “I love you, Baela.”
“Then love me,” she wails, her eyes weighing heavy.
He does so. He kisses her everywhere, loves her until she floats, soothes her when she cries—this daughter of yours I know not why she makes me this way—she loves you she cannot wait to be held by you and have her eyes poisoned with your awful singing—are you any better then—and if he can still make her laugh then he has not ruined anything irreparably.
The stitches that hold everything in a fragile balance strain. They do not break.
Daemon’s scars bleed from the tree above them, and the cracks in Jacaerys’ heart are hidden away for another day.