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The air in the birthing chamber hung heavy as old blood, thick with the iron scent of it and the faint, sweet rot of the herbs the maester had burned to ease her pains. Summerhall’s stones held the chill of the evening even in high summer, and the brazier’s glow painted the walls in shifting orange and black, the shadows of the tapestries—hunting hounds and falcons, all Dayne silver and starlight—twisting like living things across the high ceiling. Prince Maekar Targaryen sat on the low stool drawn close to the great bed, his broad shoulders hunched, his mailed fists—still gauntleted from the training yard where they had dragged him—clenched on his thighs. The leather creaked when he shifted. He did not remove the gauntlets. He could not bear to touch her with bare skin, not now.
Dyanna lay against the pillows, her face turned slightly toward him as it had been in the last moment. Her eyes were closed, the long dark lashes stark against cheeks gone waxen. The smile lingered there, faint as a ghost, the one she had given when the babe was laid upon her breast and they had spoken the name together—Rhae, she had whispered, voice thin but clear, the Dornish lilt still in it even after all these years. Rhae, for the star that guides us home. She had smiled then, full and soft, the way she had smiled at him across the feast table the night they first spoke, or when Daeron had first gripped her finger, or when Aemon had toddled to her knee and called her mama in his solemn little voice. That smile had been the last thing.
And then it was no more.
The wet-nurse hovered in the corner with the bundled child, murmuring nonsense to quiet the thin, angry cries. Maekar did not look. He kept his gaze fixed on Dyanna’s still face, on the hollow at her throat where the pulse had fluttered and then stilled like a candle snuffed between two fingers. She was fine, the maester had said not an hour past, wiping blood from his hands with a cloth that would never come clean. The bleeding slowed. The fever had not taken root. She laughed, my prince, when the girl took the breast. Fine. And now this.
His chest seized. The heart in it hammered as though it would batter its way out through his ribs and leave him as empty as the husk on the bed. Why. The word beat in time with the blood in his ears. Why did I ruin everything?
They had already had the children. Five of them—Daeron with his quick laugh and quicker temper, Aerion already tall and proud and fierce-eyed, Aemon quiet and bookish even at his small age, Daella with her mother’s dark hair and the Dayne tilt to her chin, and little Aegon, Egg they called him now, sturdy and stubborn and forever underfoot. They had filled the nurseries of Summerhall with noise and mischief and the clatter of wooden swords. Dyanna had borne them all without complaint, had risen from each childbed thinner but stronger, had looked at him across the pillows with that same smile and said, Enough now, my love. The gods have been kind. He had agreed. He had sworn it. His duties as prince—commanding the household knights, riding the marches when the Dornish grew restless, standing in his father’s councils—had kept him away often enough. He had told himself it was mercy not to ask more of her.
And yet he had asked. Or allowed it. Or not prevented it. The nights when the wine was sweet and her hair spilled across his chest like starlight on black water, when she had drawn him close and whispered that she was not yet done with him, that a prince needed daughters as well as sons. One more, she had said, her fingers tracing the scars on his jaw. One more, and then I shall be content. He had laughed, low and rough, and taken her mouth and thought no more of it.
Now the one more lay squalling in the wet-nurse’s arms, and Dyanna lay cold.
A low sound tore from his throat, half growl, half sob. He hated it. Hated the weakness of it. He was Maekar Targaryen, fourth son of Daeron the Good, the man who had stood at the Redgrass Field and watched his uncle’s host break the Blackfyre rebels, the man whose hammer had cracked helms and whose temper had cracked worse. He did not weep. He did not break. And yet here he sat, gauntlets digging into his own thighs, eyes burning, throat thick with something that tasted of ash and copper.
You fool, he thought, the words a lash across his own mind. You great, lumbering, thick-skulled fool. You could not leave well enough alone. You took and took and now she is gone and the realm will say it was only another Targaryen woman worn out in the birthing bed, as if she were some broodmare and not—
Not Dyanna. Not the girl who had ridden into the lists at her brother’s tourney in Starfall with her hair braided with silver bells, laughing when the wind snatched them. Not the woman who had stood before the septon with him and spoken her vows in a voice that carried clear across the Baelor's Sept, promising him her heart and her soul and her starlit blood. Not the mother who had sung to their sons in the old Dornish tongue when nightmares came, who had taught Daella the proper way to hold a needle and a dagger both, who had looked at him after every hard birth and said, I am still here, husband. I am still yours.
He could not breathe. The chamber tilted. He pressed the heels of his gauntleted hands to his eyes until sparks burst behind the lids, but the image would not leave: her smile fading, the light going out of those violet eyes like dusk swallowing the sea at Starfall. Why did I ruin everything?
The wet-nurse shifted. The babe’s cries sharpened, a thin, demanding wail that cut straight through him. He flinched. Could not look. Her cheeks, he thought, the words rising unbidden and hateful, and her nose. Small and straight and perfect, like Dyanna’s when she was a girl. Like the portrait her father sent before the wedding. He hated the thought the instant it formed. Hated himself more for it. Rhae had done nothing. She was but a babe, red-faced and new and innocent as new-fallen snow. She had not asked to be born. She had not asked for her mother’s life in exchange for her own. And yet the anger rose in him anyway, hot and choking, a black tide he could not stem. Why this one? Why now? We had the sons. We had the daughters. Why could you not have been content?
He struck the thought down as savagely as he would have struck an enemy on the field. Gods, what manner of man are you? Dyanna would have had his hide for it. He could hear her voice now, sharp as a lance-point, the Dornish fire in it. You would trade our daughter for my life, Maekar? You low, selfish, dragon-blooded oaf. I carried her. I named her. Look at her. She would have taken his bearded chin in her hand and turned his face to the cradle, forcing him to see. She had always been stronger than he was. Always.
He could not look.
The door to the antechamber opened with a soft scrape of hinges. Footsteps, measured and familiar. Maekar knew them without lifting his head. Baelor. Of course it would be Baelor. His eldest brother, the golden one, the heir, the Breakspear, tall and straight and already cloaked in the dignity of the crown he would one day wear. Maekar felt the man’s presence like a draught of cold air. He did not turn.
“Maekar,” Baelor said quietly. The voice was warm, careful, the tone one used with a wounded horse or a grieving child. “The maester told me. I am… I am so sorry, brother.”
Maekar’s jaw tightened until the muscles ached. He kept his eyes on Dyanna’s face. The smile was already less now, settling into the slack lines of death. Do not speak to me of sorrow, he wanted to snarl. You have your wife. You have your sons. Your line is secure and your hands are clean of this. But the words would not come. Instead he said nothing, only breathed through his teeth.
Baelor came closer. The scent of him—leather and clean sweat and the faint spice of the Southron court—filled the chamber. A hand settled on Maekar’s shoulder, heavy and brotherly. “She was a good woman. A true lady of the realm. The children will be told gently. Daeron is already asking after her. He wishes to see—”
“No.” The word tore out of him, raw.
Baelor’s hand tightened. “Maekar—”
“I said no.” He shrugged the hand off as though it burned. Stood abruptly, the stool scraping back across the rushes. His shadow fell across the bed, across her still form, and for a moment he could not bear even that. He turned away, toward the narrow window that overlooked the darkening godswood. The heart tree’s leaves stirred in the evening wind, pale as ghosts. “Leave me.”
“Brother, you should not be alone in this. Let me sit with you. Let the septon come. The rites—”
“I do not want rites.” Maekar’s voice cracked like a whip. He kept his back to the room, to the bed, to the babe whose cries had quieted now to soft, exhausted hiccups. “I do not want mourning. I do not want your pity or your prayers or your careful words. She is dead, Baelor. Dead because I—” He stopped. The heart hammered again, wild and uncontrollable, a war-drum in his chest. Because I could not keep my hands from her. Because I let her carry another when she had already given enough. Because I am a man who ruins what he loves.
He could not say it aloud. Not to Baelor, who had never ruined anything in his golden life.
The silence stretched. He heard Baelor shift, the rustle of his cloak. “You loved her,” his brother said at last, gentle as ever. “She knew it. All of us knew it. Even Father—”
“Get out.”
“Maekar—”
“Get. Out.” He did not shout. He did not need to. The words fell like hammer blows on steel. He heard Baelor hesitate, then the soft retreat of boots, the door closing with a final, quiet click.
Alone again.
The chamber felt smaller without even that unwelcome presence. The brazier popped; a coal shifted and sent up a brief flare of sparks. Dyanna did not stir. Of course she did not. She would never stir again.
He crossed back to the bed on legs that felt wooden. Sank to his knees this time, the mail of his hauberk ringing softly against the stone floor. He reached out—gauntlets still on—and laid one heavy hand beside hers on the coverlet. Not touching. He could not. Not yet. Her fingers were already cooling, the skin waxy and pale. The ring he had given her on their wedding day—simple gold set with a star sapphire from the mountains above Starfall—glinted dully in the firelight. He remembered slipping it onto her finger, how her hand had trembled just a little, how she had looked up at him with those eyes and said, I am yours, dragon. For as long as the stars burn.
The stars had not burned out. She had.
Why did I ruin everything?
The question circled again, relentless. They had been happy. Not the storybook sort sung by fools and mummers, but real and hard and theirs. He had been gruff and quick to anger; she had met him with Dornish steel and laughter sharp enough to cut. They had fought—gods, how they had fought—over the children’s training, over his long absences on the marches, over whether Egg should be allowed to run wild with the stableboys. And always they had come back to one another in the dark, her body warm against his, her mouth at his ear whispering the old promises. She had made him laugh, rare as that was. She had made him gentle, rarer still.
And now he sat here, a low and wretched thing, unable even to look upon the daughter she had died to bring into the world. Rhae. The name tasted of salt and iron on his tongue. He would not trade her. He knew it in his bones, the same way he knew the weight of his hammer. He would not trade any of them. But the thought had been there, poisonous and true: We already had children. Why this one? Why her life for another?
He struck his own thigh with the flat of his gauntlet, hard enough that the pain flared bright and clean. Better man. You were never a better man. You were only ever a soldier who happened to wed a star. Dyanna had deserved more. She had deserved a husband who did not ride off to war and leave her to bear their get alone. Who did not fill her belly again and again until it killed her. Who could look at their newest daughter without this black rage twisting in his gut.
The babe stirred once more in the wet-nurse’s arms. A small sound, almost a sigh. Maekar’s head turned despite himself. The bundle was tiny, swaddled tight in soft wool the color of cream. A tuft of dark hair showed above the blanket. The cheeks—gods, the cheeks—were round and flushed, the nose a small, perfect blade. Like Dyanna’s. Like the miniature her mother had sent with the betrothal gifts, the one he had carried in his pouch through every campaign until the leather wore thin.
He looked away so sharply his neck cracked. The wet-nurse made a soft, frightened noise and backed toward the door, but he did not stop her. Let her take the child. Let the nurses and the septas and the whole damned court fuss and coo and pretend the world had not ended in this chamber. He could not bear the sight of her. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
You would have my hide, wife, he thought, and the words were almost a prayer. You would box my ears and call me every name under the Seven and then make me hold her anyway. You always did.
But Dyanna was gone, and the only answer was the wind sighing through the godswood and the distant, lonely call of a night-bird.
He stayed on his knees until the brazier burned low and the room grew cold. The maester came once, hesitant, murmuring of preparations and the children who must be told. Maekar sent him away with a look. Later, perhaps. When he could speak without shattering. When the heart in his chest stopped trying to claw its way free. When he could look at his sons and daughter and not see the cost of their lives written in their mother’s still face.
Can ye turn back time? The question rose unbidden, childish and desperate. He had asked it once as a boy, after his own mother’s death, and his father had only shaken his head. No, lad. The gods give us what they give, and we endure. Maekar had not understood then. He understood now, with a clarity that cut deeper than any blade.
He reached out at last—gauntlets off now, fingers clumsy and scarred—and brushed a lock of hair from Dyanna’s forehead. The skin was cold. He bent his head until his brow rested against the edge of the mattress, close enough to smell the faint ghost of her—lavender and blood and the sweet oil she had rubbed into her wrists. Close enough to pretend, for one last moment, that she might stir and chide him for brooding.
Forgive me, he thought. Forgive me for not being the man you deserved. Forgive me for this last child that took you from us. Forgive me for the anger I feel even now, when I should only feel grief.
No answer came. The smile on her lips had faded entirely.
Outside, the stars wheeled above Summerhall, cold and indifferent. Inside, Maekar Targaryen remained on his knees beside the deathbed of his wife, the weight of six children and one irreplaceable loss pressing down upon him like the whole of the realm. He did not weep. He did not rage aloud. He only breathed, ragged and slow, and hated himself with a depth that had no bottom.
Why, the heart still asked, hammering against his ribs. Why did I ruin everything?
And somewhere in the dark, the answer came back, merciless and true: Because you are only a man. And men break what they love.
The night stretched on. The children would wake soon. The realm would demand its prince. But for now there was only this room, this bed, this woman who had smiled at him one final time and then smiled no more. Maekar closed his eyes and let the silence swallow him whole.