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By seven-and-ten, Jaehaera had learned that memory was not a straight road but a warren, dark passages folding into one another, some leading nowhere, others ending in walls she could not pass. She didn’t trust it, not fully. She’d been too young when the war ended and younger still when it began to hollow her out.
Yet there were things that remained. She remembered her brother dying.
Not how he died, not the blade that cut his throat or her mother’s screams, but the shape his absence took. At first it was small. He was not in his cradle when she woke, nor later in the day, nor the next. Then his name stopped being spoken and the servants moved more quietly. Doors were closed that had once been open. After a time she realized she wasn’t seeing him anywhere at all, not even in places where he could possibly have been. That was when she understood he was gone.
No one explained it to her. No one told her what death was, or why it took some children and spared others. It was simply decided that she would manage without knowing.
She’d been a quiet child. Too quiet, is what her grandmother used to say, with a frown that suggested disapproval rather than concern. Jaehaera learned early that quietness was a virtue, better be invisible than have a voice.
She remembered her mother dying too, though that memory was thinner, stretched almost to transparency. It was not the death itself she recalled but the manner of being led through it. Years later she would try to remember her mother properly and find only fragments. A tall woman, hair the same silver as her own, bending low. A gentle hand against her cheek. A warm and proud smile, when Jaehaera brought her a butterfly caught clumsily in her small fists. Her mother told her to free it, that some things are not meant to be caged.
A woman’s hands trembling, closed around her own. One of her mother’s ladies, Jaehaera couldn’t remember her name now. She didn’t speak as she took Jaehaera away, only pressed her fingers tighter as though afraid the child might slip from her grasp. As if Jaehaera had even anywhere to go. They brought her to her father and she remembered trying not to look at his face.
He had always turned his head when she entered the room, angling himself so she saw only the side that was still a man’s. That night he did not. The firelight showed all of him, the ruin of melted flesh, skin drawn and twisted, one eye clouded and dead. It was the first time she understood monsters from books could be real.
He knelt before her then. She remembered that clearly, because it was so strange. Kings did not kneel. Fathers sometimes did. And he used to be her father before being a king.
“Now it is just you and me, daughter,”
His voice was rough as if scraped raw. She remembered not wanting to hear those words, though she did not know why. Something in her recoiled from them. She’d wanted to look anywhere else, the floor, the walls, the shadows, but something held her still. Fear perhaps. Or duty, already pressing its small, cold hand to her spine. Before even knowing what that word truly meant.
“I will look after you,” he said. As a father would. She believed him but didn’t answer. She’d learned by then that silence was safer than the wrong words.
Those were confusing days. The castle seemed to darken, she later understood it was only the war drawing closer. Halls echoed, doors slammed. Men spoke in low, urgent voices that ceased when she entered. At night the walls seemed to thrum, as if the stones themselves were listening for approaching armies.
She had a half-faced father and a dead mother, and no one else who belonged to her. Her mother had been kind, she thought. She hoped, deep down, that was true. Perhaps just not kind enough to stay by her side.
Her father for his part, grew more restless by the day. Anger sat easily on him, like a crown better suited than the one he wore. At first it was the councilors, the messengers, the men who brought him lists of the dead. Later, it was anyone near enough to feel its heat. Her father had sad eyes, almost doll like. She later found them in herself. It made her want to scratch her own eyes out, afaird someone else might see the same eyes in her.
He told her once that her uncle had died protecting them. “The one with the patch,” he said, dismissively. “Aemond.”
He didn’t sound sad. He sounded furious, as he always did when numbers were spoken before him. She remembered that uncle, long hair pale as moonlight, he had an odd object on his eye so it was easier to remember him. He had lifted her high once, spun her until she squealed, her mother warning him to be careful with her. He call her little dragon, dismissing her mother. She thought she cried for him that night.
She remembered hearing her mother whisper his name once too, in the dark. It had woken her. Not long after, her mother died too, perhaps to join him. Like a sister would, like she should have done.
Her father’s anger began to spill. Sometimes it found her.
“It should have been you instead of Jaehaerys,” he said once, when she mentioned her mother’s name, asking for her. The words struck her like a slap. She didn’t understand them but felt just the hatred behind them.
“You miss your mother?” he went on, and his laugh echoed horribly, filling the chamber. “Look around you, daughter. If she had wished it, she would still be here.”
She tried to pull away then, but his hands closed on her shoulders holding her down. One empty eye and one normal one looking at her.
“She chose to leave you,” he said. “To leave us.” The second one was whispered, almost to himself. Like a betrayed child who’s mother has abandoned him, like her.
She cried then, softly at first, then harder, until the sound tore from her chest. For a moment she thought he might strike her. Instead he released her, stepping back as if burned. He never held her after her brother’s death.
“We have only each other,” he said, and there was something like sorrow in his voice. “Just you and me.” And oh, it sounded so unbelievably lonely. But that was better than the shouting. Better than the smashing of cups and the throwing of things. She clung to it, because children clung to what they could.
He was frightening, but he was right about one thing, he was the only one left who looked like her. The same hair, the same eyes. Her family, or what remained of it.
She heard later, that he had killed his sister, her aunt. She didn’t believe her own twin brother would have ever killed her. Siblings did not do such things. But in her family, it seemed they did.
The worst came after, when her father fell ill. The anger burned itself out, leaving only something brittle behind. He grew thin, quieter, he slept too much. They would not let her in at first. “The king is not himself,” they told her. “He calls for his mother.”
As though that were new, as though he had ever stopped. Jaehaera stood outside the chamber doors and listened to him rage against men who were not there. The smell of sour wine and sickness bled into the corridor. Once, she heard glass shatter. Once, a sob. When at last they allowed her inside, it wasn’t because he had grown calmer. It was because he’d grown quieter.
The chamber was dim. Curtains drawn, candles guttering in thick pools of wax. He lay tangled in sheets, thinner than she had ever seen him. The crown was nowhere in sight. His hair clung damply to his brow, he did not look like a king. He looked like something already half-gone.
His eyes flickered open, pale and clouded. Searching. “Mother?” he rasped. The word struck her like a thrown stone. She stepped closer. “It is Jaehaera.”
He stared at her as though through water. For a moment she thought he didn’t know her, then something shifted.
“My girl,” he breathed. She came to his bedside. His hand twitched against the blankets. She took it, his skin was fever-hot.
“They say…” His voice broke into a cough. “They say she loves me.” Jaehaera didn’t know which she he meant.
“Does she?” he asked. It was not the question of a king, it was a boy’s.
Jaehaera thought of all the ways love had ruined their house. “Yes,” she said at last. His grip tightened weakly. “She never said.” He swallowed, struggling for breath “Do you love me?” he asked then. The room seemed to tilt. He had never asked her that before.
He had taught her vengeance. Taught her pride, that who their enemies were. But never this. Instead she said the only thing she knew, “I am your daughter.”
He searched her face for something more, perhaps something softer. When it did not come, something in him seemed to fold inward.
“You are part me” he murmured, so faint she almost thought she imagined it. “Even when I hated the rest.” His eyes drifted shut. He did not ask for her again and the maesters moved in.
Death, he had once said, was the coward’s way out. And then he took it. He left her too. She think he took some part of her with him, leaving her empty.
Jaehaera learned then that even kings broke their words, and that those who swore never to abandon you were often the first to do.
It was her grandmother who came for her later. Alicent Hightower was still familiar, and yet not. The auburn hair remained, though it had dulled, and the green of her eyes seemed harder somehow, sharpened by years that had not been kind. She flinched when she first saw Jaehaera, just the smallest motion, quickly mastered. Jaehaera had always thought her grandmother beautiful, set apart from the court, which in her memory had always looked grey and worn beside her. Now she looked older than she should have, as if time had hurried her along.
Her touch at least, was still gentle. Jaehaera craved it desperately.
“You will marry the boy,”
The words were said plainly, as if they were instructions about where to sit or how to move. Jaehaera stared at her, too confused to answer. Lady Alicent sighed then, a sound worn thin with exhaustion, and brushed her hair back from her face. She tried to explain but there were no words that could make sense of it. How did one tell a child that marriage was the only thing standing between her and the grave her family already filled?
“It’s for your safety,” Alicent said, and then after a pause, added more softly, “There is no one left to protect you otherwise.”
Jaehaera didn’t understand that either. Safety had never felt solid to her. It had always slipped away, no matter how tightly it was promised.
“Your cousin will be crowned king,” her grandmother went on. She hesitated then, her voice faltering. When she spoke again it sounded as though it might break. “And you will be queen.”
Even now, Jaehaera could remember thinking that from Alicent Hightower’s lips, it sounded less like an honor than a sentence. The worst punishment in the world delivered gently.
They dressed her and placed her where she was meant to stand, beside a boy who didn’t look much older than she was. She noticed things then, small and strange details, the sort a child clung to. His hair was lighter than hers, almost white, eyes eyes dark while her own were lighter , closer to a pale purple . She’d thought, in some quiet corner of her mind, that after her father’s death she would never again see someone who looked like a reflection of herself.
She’d been wrong. She learned later that he was nothing like her. They told her what to say, and she whispered the words with a shaking voice, careful not to stumble. She remembered thinking how light her crown felt, how easily it might slip from her head if she moved too quickly.
And then it was done. She was a queen. It seemed, people around her continued to die, and no one ever seemed to know what to do with her once they were gone. So they handed her over, one to the next, as if she were something fragile and dangerous all at once, an heirloom passed along because no one dared throw it away.
“Your Grace,” the girl said carefully, bringing back to the present. Jaehaera shook her head, a small, unconscious motion, as though sense might be shaken back into her. She had gone too far down the paths of memory, it seemed, and had lost the present altogether.
“What did you say?”
Her lady-in-waiting, Ellyn Tyrell, looked unsettled at being made to repeat herself. Ellyn had been at her side since girlhood, and even now, after years at court, her hands betrayed her when she was nervous, twisting together at her waist.
“The guard heard it from the maesters,” Ellyn said at last. “The king has been unwell for some time now.”
Jaehaera had heard it the first time, that was the trouble. The words had struck her and sent her mind spiraling, dragging with them images she had no wish to see again, a woman’s hands passing her forward, a crown too heavy for a child, Aegon standing where her father once had.
“Are you certain?” she manage to ask, hating the way her voice sounded, thin and shaky, almost hopeless.
Ellyn hesitated, her brow furrowing. She’d never heard her speak like that before.
“It is only what I have heard,” she said gently. “But, your grace…if it is true, surely you would have noticed.”
Jaehaera didn’t answer at once. She didn’t want to think. Thinking had never brought her comfort. Yet the truth rose up before her, obvious in a way that felt almost cruel now that it’d been spoken aloud. She’d seen Aegon only when it had been necessary. That had always been the way of it. Councils, appearances, ceremonies that required a king and queen to sit side by side like figures carved from the same stone.
Outside of those moments, he was absent. She should have noticed sooner. The shorter visits. The way he no longer lingered, even when Prince Viserys was present. Viserys, the only person Aegon ever softened for, the only one whose presence seemed to loosen something in him. Always there had been a Maester hovering close behind or one of the Maester’s pupils, attentive in a way that now seemed less like duty and more like vigilance.
Jaehaera closed her eyes. She wished, desperately and foolishly, that this was only panic speaking. That she had woven another fear from nothing, as she had so often done before. He wouldn’t do this to her, he would not leave her in the dark as her father had. Not like this.
“I need to see him,” she said, the words firm despite the storm gathering beneath them.
Ellyn’s shoulders stiffened. “Your Grace-”
“I need to be certain,” Jaehaera repeated.
And she did. Because she had learned, long ago, that illness had a way of becoming absence, and absence had a way of becoming forever. Jaehaera didn’t wait long enough for doubt to take root. “Prepare me,”
Ellyn Tyrell blinked, then moved at once. She looked weary as she did it, her mouth set tight, as though she were already rehearsing the apologies she would have to make if this proved to be nothing at all. Her hands were steady, though. They always were. She brushed Jaehaera’s hair with practiced care, drawing it smooth, parting it neatly, reaching for the ribbons she used when the queen was to be braided and pinned and made suitably distant.
“Not that,” Jaehaera said. Ellyn paused, confused. “Your Grace?
“Leave it,” she repeated. “As it is.” The girl hesitated, clearly unsure. It wasn’t how a queen wore her hair. It was how a girl did, loose and simple, unguarded. Jaehaera saw the question in her eyes and didn’t answer it. She only thought dimly, that if she looked as she once had, perhaps it might do something. Aegon was kinder to her the early years. It would be closer to honesty than the carefully constructed woman she wore like armor.
Ellyn obeyed, when Jaehaera stepped into the corridor, Ser Mervyn Flowers stood waiting outside her door. The sight of him nearly drew an eye-roll from her, an impulse sharp enough to surprise her with its familiarity. He still hasn’t let go of this facade of being her protector and not her butcher in waiting. She crushed it at once and smiled instead, the pleasant empty thing the court expected.
“My queen,” he said. “Are you bound for the sept?”
“No,” Jaehaera replied. “I’m going to see the king.”
His brows rose, just a fraction. It wasn’t strange that a wife should wish to see her husband. It was strange that she should do so without being summoned.
“I have no need of escort,” she added, before he could speak.
Ser Mervyn inclined his head, though she saw the flicker of curiosity he didn’t quite manage to hide. She passed him, thinking that he might as well return to drowning himself in wine and maids, as he so often did like the crown prince.
The walk to the king’s chambers felt longer than it ought to have been. When she arrived, it was not the king’s guard she found there, but Prince Viserys’s men, familiar faces, stationed as though they belonged. They bowed as she approached.
“My queen,” one of them said carefully, “the king is not present at the moment.”
“Where is he?”
“With the council,”
She nodded, already turning to leave, disappointment and impatient when the door opened behind them.
“Why was I not told that our dear queen was here?”
Prince Viserys stepped into the threshold, his smile bright and open. His hair had grown longer than his brother’s, silver strands brushing his shoulders. One of the guards flinched at his sudden appearance.
He crooked a finger and gestured her inside, as though the chambers were his own. She followed, noting how naturally he moved through the space. If the whispers were true, he had already made himself at home.
He poured himself a cup then turned and looked at her properly at last, his gaze traveling from her face to her hair and lingering there. “Your hair,” he said. “It brings back memories.”
“Pleasant ones, I hope.” She was hoping this unwanted attention was from her husband, not him.
He smiled. “It is always pleasant with you, cousin.”
Cousin, not my queen. After all, he was the realm’s heir. And she was only a woman who had failed to give the king a son. Hardly a queen. Viserys leaned back against the table, watching her with an ease that suggested he had never learned to be wary of her. He spoke to her as if they were something simple, cousins, his good-sister, bound by shared blood and nothing more. He always thought it so, Jaehaera knew. She never corrected him. It was easier to let him believe in a closeness that cost her nothing and gave him comfort.
She did not notice the way his eyes lingered on her. Or rather she noticed and dismissed it, as she dismissed so many things. He was spoiled, that much she learned since his return to the Red Keep. Spoiled by affection, by leniency, by a life that had not demanded he harden himself to survive it.
She remembered the day he come back. How Aegon had embraced him with a fierceness that startled her. It was the first time she’d seen her husband hold anyone like that, not even his sisters had been given that grace. Only later she understood it for what it was. Not love alone but guilt.
Viserys carried something neither she nor Aegon did. A lightness, fragile but intact. He laughed easily. He moved through the world as if it had not taught him, again and again, how cruel it could be. He was not born into the horrors they wore like second skins. He was a charmer, while his older brother seemed to carry a cloud of gloom with himself. He could never understand them. And she stopped expecting him to.
“I was told Aegon is at the Council,” she said lightly, breaking the quiet, “Why aren’t you?”
His mouth curved, almost by habit. “You wound me, cousin. Am I so poor a substitute?”
She allowed herself the smallest smile. “You are rarely so quiet.”
He drank again, wine darkened his lips. When he spoke, there was something brittle beneath the familiar ease. “Perhaps I am learning.”
She met his gaze evenly. “I assume Lady Larra will not be returning for some time.”
He barked a laugh, sharp and bitter. “For a long time, if the gods favor me.”
Larra Rogare, his wife, older than she was, had been sobbing into her shoulder, hands clutching at her sleeves as though Jaehaera herself were a lifeline. Love that had bloomed too quickly, only to wither just as fast, it seems. One child and already Viserys had grown restless.
She had comforted her, of course. Told her he would come to his senses. That the prince was foolish, but not heartless. That her patience would be rewarded. It was what a good queen should say. The truth was simpler, and far less kind. Viserys could did as he pleased because no one had ever truly told him he could not.
“So,” he said, lifting his cup and taking a slow sip, “Are you here for the queenly duties or you’ve missed my brother?”
The word lingered deliberately imprecise. Jaehaera didn’t rise to it. She never did. Whether he truly believed there was warmth between her and Aegon, or whether he merely enjoyed testing the space around her, she couldn’t say. He knew well enough how little time they spent together, how carefully measured their encounters were.
“Do not mistake presence for intimacy,”
Viserys’ smile only widened. “I would never presume to name what passes between the two of you,” he replied. “Only to envy it.”
It was said lightly, but his eyes held on her a moment longer than courtesy required. He had always been careful, never crossing the line, never quite stepping back. His words never cut deeply but they had a way of leaving their mark all the same.
“I have business with the king,” she said. “Nothing more.”
Viserys’s eyes flicked away. “You make it sound so romantic.”there was a quiet amusement in his voice.
Jaehaera turned away then, her gaze drifting once more over the chamber that was not his and yet so clearly was. Somewhere beyond these walls, the king sat in council, ill or well, withholding himself as he always had.
She had almost reached the door when Viserys spoke again. “You know,” he said, lightly, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, “You are…unchanged .”
Jaehaera paused, her hand resting on the latch. “That is a poor measure of worth,” she said without turning.
“Perhaps, but it is a reliable one.”
She faced him then. He had straightened, his earlier languor giving way to something more attentive. He studied her as he always did in moments like this, not openly nor crudely, but with a consideration that felt uncomfortably personal, as though he were weighing something only he could see.
As a kid he was kind to her. Everytime his sisters were here they would avoid her like plague, make it so painfully clear they did not want to share a room with her. He was different though, he’d smile at her and sit next to her. It was kindness, but then one of his sisters would whisper something in his ear and he’d easily sway away. The smile directed to someone else. That was the problem with him. Not Aegon, he was unwavering, even when his sisters insisted he takes another wife and replace her, that was the best and worst thing about him.
“People mistake that for coldness,” he went on, stepping closer, though he kept a careful distance. “I don’t.”
There it was. The small indulgence he allowed himself. Not a confession, not even an accusation, only a suggestion, delicately placed, so that it could be denied if named.
“That is a generous reading,”
“I’ve always been generous with you,” Viserys replied smiling. “You make it easy.”
She felt the familiar tightening in her chest, the warning that told her to move, to end this before it grew teeth. She stopped at the threshold.
“If the king returns,” Jaehaera said, “tell him I need to speak with him.”
Viserys inclined his head, exaggerated just enough to be unmistakable. “Yes, my queen,” he said, mockingly sweet.
She didn’t dignify it with a look. The door closed behind her, cutting off his presence like a held breath finally released.
The trouble with Viserys was that she had never truly bothered with him. Not in any meaningful way. She’d given him just enough, politeness, patience, the appearance of ease, to keep him entertained, to ensure he did not grow resentful of her as his sisters . It was a balance she had learned young, offer enough to be harmless.
Had she looked more closely, she might have seen that it was not only Aegon who had changed. Viserys was already on his fourth cup. She had watched him pour without counting, careless of the time, careless of the eyes upon him. His wife had been sent away with a few curt words and a wave of the hand, dismissed as one might dismiss a servant. He had always been impulsive. Lately, he was worse, reckless. Restless, even, rebellious.
She walked on, her steps measured, her thoughts anything but. If Aegon was truly ill, would he tell his brother?
The answer didn’t come easily. Viserys was loved. That much was plain. Love, she’d learned, compelled people to warn one another of approaching storms. To soften blows before they landed. She thought of all the times she had been left unwarned.
Not one told of her brother’s death. Not told of her mother’s. Not told when the world was about to change and leave her behind. Ignored, instead.
When a queen said she needed to speak with someone, it rarely took more than hours for the summons to be answered. Sometimes less. Men rearranged their days for far smaller requests. Not Aegon, he did not come that evening, nor the next morning. No word was sent to excuse him, no apology offered through a messenger’s careful mouth. The day passed, then the night and still he didn’t come.
It was two days later when he finally appeared. By then, Jaehaera had already understood what the delay meant. His silence had spoken for him, loud and unambiguous. Her request had been noted, weighed and placed where it belonged, somewhere beneath councils and Viserys and whatever occupied his attention now.
There was no haste to him, no urgency. If he was ill, he hid it well enough. But he looked as he always did these days, tired in a way that suggested habit rather than weakness, his expression carefully schooled into something distant.
“My queen,” he said, inclining his head. It struck her then how rarely he used her name.
“You asked for me,” he added, as though the matter were a minor inconvenience, easily addressed and as easily forgotten again. Two days, she thought.
Two days, and still she said nothing of it. She’d learned better than to name neglect aloud. It only ever made men defensive, and she was too tired for that. Instead, she studied him, searching for signs she was not meant to see, the pallor Ellyn had spoken of, the tremor, the weight of sickness. If they were there, he had buried them deep.
“You have been busy,” she said finally.
Aegon’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. For Aegon had never been one for smiling. “The realm does not wait.”
No, she thought. But queens did. She wondered then, not for the first time, whether Viserys knew more than she did. Whether Aegon had warned him, quietly and privately, as one did when it mattered. She had never been prepared for anything in her life.
If he was sick, truly sick, would he tell her at all? Or would he let her discover it as she always had, too late, standing in the aftermath, expected to endure with grace?
And Aegon, standing there at last, gave no sign that he understood how much those two days had already cost her.
Their relationship had always been something confusing, unfinished, shaped by a history rooted in blood, two lost children, and only one of them had found a path. While it seemed Jaehaera has stayed exactly the same place.
He had been her husband before he had been anything else she might learn about him. Before she knew his world, his silences, the way his moods hardly shifted as if he were a stone. Before she knew what people whispered, that her father had made him watch as his dragon devoured her mother. That was not something one ought to be told about a husband. And yet, nothing about her life had ever obeyed such rules.
She remembered, too, the knife.
Her grandmother’s hands had been shaking as she pressed it into Jaehaera’s small palms, urging her to strike while there was still time. She had been too young to understand what killing truly meant, only that everyone seemed afraid of the boy in front of her, and that she was meant to end him. For the good of the realm, she had said. For your blood.
Jaehaera’s hands had shaken so badly the steel rang faintly against itself. She remembered how he’d watched her then, quiet, eyes sharp with understanding far too old for his face. When she could not lift the blade, when her fingers went numb and useless, he had reached out and taken it from her as easily as one might take a child’s toy. There had been no anger in him. Only resolve. Sometimes she wondered how different everything might have been had she obeyed. The thought came to her unbidden, and she let it pass as she always did. If not her knife, the sickness will wither him away.
She stepped closer to him now. That, at least, was not unusual.
Up close, the signs were harder to ignore. His skin was paler than she remembered, the shadows beneath his eyes deeper. He had always looked steady, even on days weighed down by council, but the lack of rest showed now, unmistakable. How blind have she been.
“You look unwell,”
There was no softness in it, no ornament. She had no time for games. His eyes widened, just slightly. She knew him well enough to see it. He didn’t mistake her words for concern.
“I am well enough,” Aegon replied, after a moment.
She didn’t step back. “Are you ill?” She asked plainly.
The question seemed to hang between them, heavy with all the things it might mean. For a heartbeat, she thought he would laugh it away, turn it into irritation or anger. Instead, his gaze held hers, sharp and searching. “It depends,” he said at last, “on what you intend to do with the answer.”
There it was, that edge that had always existed between them. The tension that had grown with the years instead of dulling. He was a man grown now, hardened by rule and resentment, but his eyes were the same as they had always been, intense, flickering between something like hatred and something far sadder.
She did not look away. “I intend to know, she said. “That is all.”
He studied her then, as if trying to decide whether she was worth the truth. He always listened to her, in his way. Sometimes. Not as a husband, but as a queen, her voice low, her influence narrow but real. There were moments when he took her counsel, and others when he only pretended to. She’d never been certain which were which.
His mouth tightened. For a moment, she thought he might dismiss her again. Instead, he exhaled, slow and controlled, and looked past her, toward the window.
“The maesters worry too much,” he said. “That is their nature.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it is the one I can give.”
The admission was almost honest, and that unsettled her more than a lie would have. What they call him, dragonbane. They say he could not mend what his family has done, that once people found out how truly vulnerable the Targeryans are, there was no fixing it. But he tries, she sees how hard he has tried. Carrying a crown that should have never been his.
Viserys’s grin flashed in her mind then, too easy, too knowing, and something in her finally gave way. She stepped closer.
“I can ask the maesters myself,” Jaehaera said. There was no threat in her voice, only certainty. Aegon closed his eyes for a moment, as if bracing himself against a blow he had known was coming. When he opened them again, the resistance was gone.
“It is the same as grandfather,” he said. “So they claim. The maesters say they understand it better now than they did then.”
Something shook loose inside her at that. Not fear alone, something sharper, more desperate. This was worse than rumors “And you believe them?”
He hesitated. When he answered, his voice was quieter. “Grandfather lived a long time with it.”
“That is not an answer,”
Aegon’s jaw tightened. “What do you want me to say, Jaehaera?”
He almost sounded as shaky as her. The use of her name struck her harder than any rebuke.
“How long,” she asked. “How long have you known?”
He didn’t answer at once. That was answer enough.
Her composure fractured then, just slightly, enough for anger to seep through. “You thought to keep this from me,” she said. “As if I wouldn’t notice. As if I had not already learned what sickness looks like in kings.”
“I did not know what to tell you,” he snapped, then caught himself. “I still don’t. The maesters speak in half-measures and cautions. Nothing certain. Nothing useful.”
“So you decided I did not deserve to know at all.”
His gaze flicked away. “I decided it would change nothing.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and uncomfortable. “And Viserys?” she asked, already dreading the answer. “Does he know?”
Aegon did not look at her when he said “Yes.”
The word landed like a sudden drop, the floor giving way beneath her without warning. For a moment, she felt weightless, adrift in the familiar vertigo of realization. Of course he knew.
Viserys, with his cups and his restlessness and his careless confidence. Viserys, who was warned. Who was prepared, who was loved enough to be told. Who was his family, something she will never be now matter how similar their blood is.
She drew in a slow breath, steadying herself by habit alone. Years of stillness pressed down on her, the old understanding settling back into place, that nothing ever truly changed for her. Not when it mattered, not when it hurt.
She was always the last to know.
“Do I mean so little,” she said. To you. To anyone. She left that part out.
The words slipped free of her before she could stop them. Not flung at him, not sharpened into accusation. They simply existed, fragile and terrible.
Aegon did not answer at once. He stood by the table, one hand braced against its edge as though the floor beneath him were unsteady.
“I did not wish to burden you more,” he said at last. There was no kindness in it, even if it looked like he wanted it to be.
Something inside her gave way. “I am your wife,” Jaehaera said, her voice low, almost careful. “Do I deserve no grace?”
He turned then, sharply. “You speak as if I am already dead.”
“The council knows. The maesters know. Your brother knows.” Her hands curled at her sides. “And I am meant to learn of it from a frightened girl who can barely meet my eyes.”
“I was trying to spare you.”
She laughed, not loudly, not cruelly. It came out broken, like breath forced through a cracked rib.
“Spare me from what?” she asked. “From my own end?”
“Do you think this marriage was ever meant to be gentle?” Reminding her, he almost looked like he regretted saying that. He opened his mouth. Closed it, looked away.
She stepped closer. The distance between them had always been measured, deliberate. Crossing it now felt like trespass. “What will happen to me,” she said.
He frowned. “What?”
“When you die.” Not if. When. The words fell heavy, undeniable.
“What will happen to me?”
Aegon’s face tightened, understanding her fully now. “I… I have spoken with Viserys. He will see that you are cared for.”
“Cared for,” she repeated. “Will I be sent to Oldtown?”
Silence.
“Will I be allowed to remain in the Red Keep?”
Still nothing.
Her breath left her in a slow, trembling exhale. That was worse than any answer he could have given. “You do not know,” she said. “You have never known.”
“Jaehaera-” He almost, almost sounded like a kid again, she has known him since he was kid. He used to look at her differently for a time. A short one. Before he saw something other then herself in her.
“You have made no plans,” she continued, her voice shaky in a way that frightened even her. “And you leave me no choice but to wait for your brother’s decision. As I waited for my grandmother’s. As I waited for the council’s. As I waited for you.”
He took a step toward her. She did not move back.
“You have let the whole realm say it is my blood that is cursed,” she said. “That the rot of my family lives on in me. That I cannot give you a child because the gods have closed themselves against me.”
His eyes flashed. “What nonsense is this?.”
The words struck harder than a blow.
“Do you truly believe Viserys will be a good king?” she interrupted. The shift caught him off guard. The anger that was building up cooling down, as it always did at the mention of his little brother.
“He is a good man.”
“So was Grandfather,” she said. “And he was no good king.”
Aegon exhaled sharply, pacing a step away. “What other choice do I have?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Let your heir be your own child.” The air between them froze. Her own heartbeat slowing down.
“What,” he said, eyes widening. She met his stare without flinching.
“I understand that you are angry,” he said, his voice carefully even. Trying to brush off what she has suggested, not even letting it linger.
“This is not anger.” She said, almost pleading
“A child,” he continued, shaking his head. “Born of us. I cannot do it.”
“You mean born of me.”
“Yes.” His voice broke then, just slightly. “Is that what you want to hear, Jaehaera?”
She searched his face , the exhaustion, the fear, the revulsion he did not bother to hide. And beneath it all, the truth she had known since girlhood. He had never seen her as a beginning. Only as something endured.
She did not want a child. The truth had lived in her long before she ever learned how to name it.
Motherhood meant nothing to her, not in the way songs promised. She had learned it through absence and ruin. Through her mother’s broken body beneath stone, through her grandmother Alicent’s voice splintered by grief, cursing her children, cursing herself, cursing the gods that had let them live at all. Through a father’s scarred face, twisted with rage, telling her she should have died instead. There was no softness in those lessons. No warmth.
And worse still, a child with him.
What if he looked at the child one day and saw the man who had fed her mother to his dragon? What if she looked at the child and saw the brother who vanished, never to return, as if the world itself had swallowed him whole? What if their child grew old enough to understand what blood it carried, enemy blood, cursed blood, and saw only hatred reflected back?
She could already imagine it. A father’s ruined face turned toward a child in disgust. A history repeating itself because it did not know how to stop.
No. She did not want a child. But she could not leave. She had nowhere to go.
The Red Keep was the only world she had ever known, its dark halls, its watching eyes, its doors that closed behind her and never opened forward. They would never let her disappear into quiet obscurity. She was too dangerous for that,a remnant of war. A spark that might yet ignite something no one could control.
She had almost died under his rule. She met his gaze again. “I have almost died under your care.”
Aegon’s brow furrowed, confusion giving way to something sharper. He understood the accusation at once.
“You think,” he said slowly, “that with me gone-”
“What would happen to me?”
“You would be protected.”
“By whom?” she asked. “Your brother?” He did not answer. The truth pressed closer, heavier.
“You would use a child,” he said finally, disbelief creeping into his voice. “As protection.”
“Yes.” The word came out harsh, immediate. “Yes,” she repeated. “Because what else is there for me?”
He stared at her as though she had struck him.
“I have nothing,” she went on. “No house. No future written for me that does not end in someone else’s hands. If I am sent away, I will die. If I stay, I am a reminder no one wants.”
Her voice did not rise. That was the most frightening part. “A child would bind them,” she said. “Bind you. Bind the realm.” Bind us. The worst of of it all.
“And damn them all,” he snapped. “You would bring another into this-”
“I was brought into this,” she said quietly. “I did not ask for it. I didn’t want it. But it happened all the same.”
She took a breath that felt like swallowing glass. “You are a king,” she said. “Do your duty.” His jaw clenched. The words hung there, bare and unadorned.
“And if that is the only thing that will keep me here,” she continued, “then yes. I will use it. I will use whatever I am allowed.”
Aegon looked at her then, truly looked, and for the first time, there was fear in his eyes that had nothing to do with sickness or death. Not of her cruelty. But of her clarity. He studied her then, more carefully than he had in years.
“The way you are looking at me right now-” Aegon stopped himself, a bitter laugh tearing free of his throat. “It is as if your grandmother has put another knife in your hands.”
Of course he would drag it into the light. He always did. As if all his distrust of her could be folded neatly into that moment, as if a frightened child with shaking fingers could explain away years of coldness, of distance, of deliberate neglect. As if it were easier to believe she had once been capable of killing him than to admit he had never known what to do with her.
She didn’t look away.
“Is asking you for a future so unbearable to you?” she asked. The words scraped on their way out.
The burn behind her eyes sharpened, familiar now. It had lived there for days, weeks, years perhaps. Grief did that. Fear. They were the first dragonlords without dragons, the last embers of a fire that had nowhere left to go. What was one meant to do with all that heat when there was nothing left to burn?
Her hands curled at her sides. She wanted to burn him. To scorch that careful distance from his face, to make him feel even a fraction of what she carried in silence.
For one treacherous moment, she almost wished her grandmother would rise from the ground and press cold steel into her palm again. At least then the world would make sense. At least then there would be an action to take, a choice sharp enough to cut through all this waiting.
Aegon watched the tears gather, and something in him shifted, not tenderness, but something close to it.
“You speak of futures,” he said hoarsely, “as if we were ever allowed one.”
“I was not allowed anything,” she shot back. “I was given. Passed. Placed beside you like an offering meant to quiet the dead.”
He took a step toward her, then stopped, as if afraid to cross an invisible line. Aegon had no answer.
He exhaled, slow and weary, as if the weight of her had finally become too much to carry. “This is not a conversation for tonight,” he said. His voice had gone flat again, the kingly tone settling over him like armor. “You are exhausted. Go to sleep. We will speak of this later.”
Later. He did not wait for her answer.
He turned, already withdrawing, already done. The door opened. The corridor swallowed him. And then she was alone, standing where he had left her, as if she had been set down and forgotten.
The silence rang. Her breath came shallow, uneven. She pressed her fingers into her arms, hard enough to hurt, harder still, until her nails bit into flesh. She welcomed the sting. Her grandmother had done the same, she remembered , thin crescents blooming red beneath her skin, a quiet, private violence. Pain was grounding, pain meant you were still here.
She did not know how long she stood like that before she moved. The mirror caught her by surprise. She stepped closer, as if approaching a stranger who might flee.
The girl staring back wore her face, her hair, her eyes, and yet it was not her. Not entirely. There was something wrong in the symmetry. Something familiar in a way that made her stomach twist.
For a heartbeat, she thought she saw him.
Jaehaerys. Her twin, folded into her reflection like a shadow stitched to her bones. His eyes where hers should be. His mouth set in that same quiet, watchful line. As if death had only rearranged them, not erased him. If she died, he would die again.
So would her mother, her father, her grandmother, all of them who lived on inside her, pressed into her blood and memory. If Viserys’ council ever decided she was too dangerous, too inconvenient, too alive, they would not hesitate. Viserys was foolish. Kind in ways that made him weak. He would listen. He would be persuaded.
She saw it with sudden, terrible clarity. The moment Aegon closes his eyes for the last time, she would follow. Not by illness. Not by age. By decision. He was her anchor. Just as her father had been. She was only alive because someone else allowed it. Her reflection did not argue. It only watched her, silent and knowing, as if it had always understood the rules better than she ever had.
For a time, Jaehaera almost managed to pretend. Until one of those dinners, the kind that existed only to reassure the realm that something resembling a family still breathed beneath the Red Keep’s roof. She sat opposite Aegon, her place fixed by custom rather than closeness, the long table a careful distance between them.
Viserys noticed her hair at once.
“You’ve done it the same way again,” he said disappointedly, eyes bright with that easy familiarity he mistook for intimacy.
She inclined her head. “It was only for a moment.”
“A shame,” he replied, smiling. “It suits you.”
Aegon’s gaze lifted then. It lingered, not sharp, not soft, but assessing. Jaehaera felt it like a weight. It was not the first time Viserys had spoken to her so openly. It would not be the last. She thought, not for the first time and not without bitterness, that should the worst come to pass, she might yet be made into one of his brother’s conveniences. Stranger turns had happened in this house.
Conversation stumbled on. When Aegon mentioned Viserys’ wife, there was a pause, brief, but telling.
Viserys opened his mouth, already forming an excuse, but Aegon cut in before he could finish.
“If you mean to send her away again,” he said coolly, “you will go with her.”
The table went still. “And you will write to her,” Aegon continued, unmoved, “and ask her to return.”
Viserys’ smile froze. Color crept up his neck, anger sharp and unpracticed. He was not accustomed to being refused, least of all by his brother.
“Well,” he said too quickly, too loudly, “forgive me if I have caught you in one of your dreadful moods.”
Aegon’s eyes darkened. Only then did Viserys seem to realize what he had said. His grin faltered. “Brother - you know I did not mean-”
A maid chose that moment to step forward with the wine. Aegon lifted a hand. “No more.” She startled, or trembled, and the cup tipped. Red splashed across the table, across Aegon’s sleeve, staining pale fabric like a fresh wound.
The sound Aegon made was sharp and furious as he rose. Then he coughed. Once, twice. Again, deep, tearing, wrong. Jaehaera’s heart twisted violently.
The sound dragged her backward through years, through stone corridors and shadowed rooms. A dying father bent double, coughing until blood stained his lips, his voice rasping through it all, Do not worry for me daughter.
She was nine again. She was small again. And Aegon was standing there, face blanching by the breath, each cough stripping color from him. Viserys was on his feet now, calling for the guards, for the maesters, panic sharpening his voice.
One of the maesters’ pupils hurried forward, reaching for Aegon’s arm. “Your Grace, we should-”
“No,” Aegon snapped hoarsely, wrenching himself free. The word cracked through the hall.
He stood there, swaying slightly, breath uneven, refusing to be moved, refusing, as he always did, to be shepherded toward whatever end awaited him.
And Jaehaera watched, helpless and burning, like when she was a child again, knowing with dreadful certainty that she was watching the beginning of something she would not survive either.
It was morning when Jaehaera left her chambers, as she always did, and made her way to the royal Sept. The Red Keep was quiet at this hour, corridors empty save for the echo of her own steps. She did not come to pray, she never truly had, but the sept offered her something she could not find anywhere else. a clear view, a place to measure the world, and a pause in the endless motion of duty.
Her grandmother had taken her and her mother here, time and time again. She remembered the awe she had felt as a girl, craning to see the flames of the candles stretch upward, so bright, so alive. She had wanted to touch them, to hold that warmth in her small hands, and had never been allowed. The memory carried a strange ache, one that had never left her. By the time word reached her that her grandmother’s mind had begun to unravel in earnest, the woman had already been confined to that same dim chamber for years. Jaehaera had been permitted visits before. Short ones. Measured ones. Never long enough to matter.
They said the king was kind to allow it.
They did not say he had taken everything else first.
When the summons finally came, if you wish to see her, you must come now, it was spoken in that careful tone reserved for the nearly dead and the nearly mad.
They warned her on the walk there. The queen dowager does not always know who stands before her. That She speaks of things long gone. That Madness has taken root.
As if madness had not been planted in all of them long ago. Jaehaera insisted.
The room had not changed. It smelled of stale linen and milk of the poppy. The hearth was cold. The windows shuttered. Alicent Hightower had once filled halls with her presence, auburn hair coiled like a crown, spine straight as a spear. Now she lay shrunken into the bed, skin thin, hands restless against the coverlet as though plucking at threads no one else could see. Jaehaera sat beside her. She did not weep. She watched.
Watched the breath rattle shallowly in her grandmother’s chest. Watched the tremor in her fingers. Watched the ghosts move behind her eyes. They had given her milk of the poppy to soften the edges of her leaving. A mercy, they said.
Jaehaera wondered when mercy had ever come without cost. She had meant to speak. She had carried words with her all morning like stones in her throat.
Tell me about my mother. No. That would make her weep. Tell me about my father. No. That would turn her face sharp with old fury.
Better not to know. Better to let the dead remain complicated and distant than tear open what little composure remained.
Alicent stirred, her gaze drifted, unfocused, and then settled, not quite on Jaehaera, but near enough.
A broken smile touched her lips “Haelaena,” she breathed. The name pierced her cleanly. Jaehaera didn’t correct her. Let her have this mercy.
She folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. “Can love be cruel, mother?” she asked softly.
The title slipped out before she could stop it. Or perhaps she did not wish to.
For a moment, the old woman’s eyes cleared, just enough to reveal something steady beneath the fog. Alicent Hightower exhaled, the sound thin as paper. “It is the only love I have ever known.” Her hand twitched once in Jaehaera’s grasp. And then stilled.
Now she walked among the kneelers, polished wood cold beneath her palms as she lowered herself into a familiar posture. She bent her head and clasped her hands, letting them rest lightly, pretending as she always had. Pretending, for her grandmother’s sake, for the sake of habit, for the sake of anyone who might ever have cared if she learned to kneel properly.
Her heart was heavy with its own darkness, and for a moment she let herself imagine that this simple act, folded hands, bowed head, might cleanse it. As if the Seven gods above had not punished her enough, as if they might undo the weight of her blood and her father’s sins by some miracle in the incense and the shadows.
She did not pray. She only pretended. She whispered nothing, because there was nothing worth speaking, and because pretending was easier than hoping. If prayer had never worked for her grandmother, never quelled the small, trembling fear or softened the disease that wracked her old body, why would it ever work for her?
The candles flickered along the aisles, dancing in the drafts from high windows, and Jaehaera stared at them for a long time. She watched the light, imagining it consuming something invisible: the guilt, the fear, the endless calculations of power and survival that had defined her life.
And when she finally rose, straight-backed, composed, she felt no lighter. Only the ritual remained, and the knowledge that she had passed through it, as she always did, performing the motions that others called piety, while she carried the truth of her own heart silently, as she always had. From the moment she had drawn breath, she had been fashioned for someone else’s keeping, someone else’s want, someone else’s need. She did not know what shape she would take if left alone. The thought frightened her more than any blade. She had been made to love her twin, taught it as instinct, as duty, as air. And when that love had not been enough, she had reached for Aegon instead, because emptiness was unbearable, and he filled i, if only briefly, if only misplaced.
That night, she understands why she went to pray, it was for forgiveness. A guilt she has to carry after this. Night in the Red Keep was never truly silent, but it learned to soften itself. Footsteps thinned. Voices dulled into murmurs behind stone. The torches burned lower, as if conserving their strength.
Jaehaera moved through it like something half-remembered.
She chose the hour carefully, late enough that duty had loosened its grip, early enough that sleep had not yet claimed him. When she reached Viserys’ door, the guards were gone. Sent away, no doubt, with a careless wave and a cup pressed into their hands.
Light seeped from beneath the door., Warm. Viserys stood near the table, his back to her, pouring himself another cup with hands that were not quite steady. His shoulders were tense, as if he were bracing against an invisible blow.
He did not turn at once. He knew she was there anyway. “You walk quietly,” he said.
“I learned young,”
He did not smile this time. His eyes lingered instead ,on her face, her hair, she did it the way he liked it. He looked… broken. Not drunk enough to forget, not sober enough to defend himself. One angry gaze from his brother had turned him into a guilty child.
“How is my brother?,” he said, but without conviction. She crossed the room slowly, each step deliberate, stopping just short of his reach.
“I was told His Grace was resting.,” she said.
“So he is,” Viserys said, too quickly. He drank again, wincing as the wine burned. “Or will be. Or ought to be. The advice varies.”
She watched him drink. Watched the way his throat moved. Watched how his gaze flickered back to her despite himself.
“He’ll forgive you,” she said.
“He hates to be watched when he’s weak,” he said quietly. “Always has.”
Jaehaera met his eyes without flinching. “And yet he allows you.”
“Because I do not look at him the way you do.” He says, defensively.
“And how is that?”
“As if you are measuring how much longer he will be useful to you.” His eyes found hers. Candles flickering. “There’s something deep and dangerous in you, Jeahaera. Those eyes of yours are like dark hooks for the soul.’’
The accusation was clumsy. The hurt beneath it was not. She inhaled once, slowly. “You mistake me.”
“Do I?” His gaze slid to her mouth, then back up. “You’ve always been very good at being where you’re meant to be, Jaehaera. ”
They stood like that for a long moment, the room pressing inward. Outside, the wind dragged itself along the towers.
“You know,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
He set the cup down too hard. Wine sloshed near the rim. “He won’t die. If that’s what you’re asking.”
Her breath caught, just barely. “I wasn’t,” she said.
“Of course you were.” He sank back into the chair, suddenly exhausted. “Everyone is. They just dress it up better.” Something unreadable passed across his face.
He reached for the cup again, then stopped. Left it untouched. Instead, he leaned against the table, fingers splayed as if grounding himself.
“I keep thinking,” he said, low, almost to himself, “that if I say the wrong thing, he’ll look at me the way he did that night.”
She stepped closer then. Not enough to touch him. Just enough that he had to feel her presence, the warmth of her, the nearness.
“You’re afraid of losing him,” she murmured.
His breath hitched. Viserys’s restraint cracked, just enough, and he leaned closer, the restless energy in him igniting. “And you are not?,”
She did not reach for him. That was the cruelty of it. She did not need to. “I’ve lost people before,” she continued, voice even, restrained. “The worst part isn’t the absence. It’s realizing how easily the world moves on without asking what it costs you.”
He looked at her now as though seeing her properly for the first time that night.
“You stay,” he said suddenly. Not an order. Almost a plea. “No matter what happens… you stay.”
Her eyes darkened. “If you ask me to,” she said. “I will.” That did something to him.
He straightened, then faltered, as if caught between instinct and restraint. His hand lifted, stopped in the air, hovering, uncertain whether it meant to reach for her or push her away.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” he said hoarsely. his hands inching toward her.
“I haven’t said anything,” she replied.
Another step. The space between them was nearly gone now. She could smell him around her, so terribly different from his brother. “You don’t have to face this alone,” she said softly. “Not tonight.”
He closed his eyes briefly, as if steadying himself. When he opened them again, there was something dangerous there, not lust, not yet, but a hunger for absolution. For permission. “And I am not good enough of a person to tell you to go.” He took a shaky breath “You don’t know what you’re offering,”
She tilted her head. “Don’t I?”
They stood there, suspended in that narrow breath between choice and consequence. Whether he would lean forward, or she would step back, neither of them yet knew. But then again Viserys was always fond of things out his touch, so when he leans just enough for his lips to brush her, Jaehaera has to hide a smile while returning the kiss, letting his tongue enter her mouth.
The candle nearest them sputtered. And the night was young.
She remembered her first blood, at three-and-ten. The maids smiled when they saw it. One of her lady-in-waiting came after, the silent ones who dressed her and spoke in low, purposeful voices. They told her she was ready now. That the gods had marked her. That the king would expect her. Jaehaera understood what that meant.
They bathed her and combed her hair until her scalp ached. They dressed her in white, too thin for the hour, too fine for comfort. No one asked if she was afraid. No one ever had. They took her to his chambers. Her father’s chambers, though now someone else lived in it.
She knew the bed. She had seen it once before, draped in black, her father laid out upon it, waxen and still. The memory came back with cruel clarity as she was left alone there, seated at the edge, feet not quite touching the floor. She waited.
She told herself she could endure it. That it’d pass quickly. That afterward there would be something else, certainty, perhaps. A child. A family of her own. The thought comforted her, small and stubborn.
Aegon was not cruel. Not truly. He had never struck her, never raised his voice. He was… steady. Like stone. Like something that endured. Friends or lovers, that was all too complicated. She wanted a family instead.
She wanted his affection. Not his body, she had not yet learned to separate the two, but the tenderness he gave so freely to his siblings. The way his eyes softened when he looked at them. The way he smiled without effort.
They had taken her family. He still had his. I am his, she thought, with a calm that felt like surrender. And he is mine. Until the end of her days.
At that age, she was naive enough to think he might come to like her. In time. Like a companion. Like a sister. Like her uncle had once loved her mother. The door opened.
He stood there for a long moment without speaking. Tall. Still. The candlelight caught in his pale hair, sharpened the lines of his face. He was handsome in the way carved things were handsome, hard, deliberate.
When she lifted her head, she met his eyes. They were colder than she remembered. Not unkind, just distant and appraising.
He didn’t come closer at once. He only looked at her, as one might look at an offering laid out according to custom. Jaehaera’s heart beat so loudly she was certain he must hear it.
For a moment, just a moment, she thought she saw hesitation. She shifted slightly, heart hammering. When she did, his expression changed.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that she could feel his warmth. It startled her, how alive it was. Like standing too near a fire. His hand lifted. For a terrible, hopeful instant, she thought he would touch her properly. Claim her, make this mean something.
Instead, his fingers came to rest against her lips. As if he were considering an idea.
It felt so good to be touched, how warm and alive he felt. She wanted to devour him, like a dragon would. Her breath caught. She parted her lips without thinking, reaching for him with a desperation she did not yet know how to be ashamed of. His fingers brushed her tongue.
Then he withdrew as if burned. He stepped back sharply, breath uneven, as though waking from a dream he despised.
Without looking at her, he turned and reached for something sharp. The sound of metal was soft but final. He drew the blade across his palm.
Blood welled, dark and deliberate, and he let it drip onto the sheets between them. Red spreading over white.
“This will suffice,”
He left her there, untouched, staring at the bed where her father had died and where her own fate had just been sealed.
That was the night Jaehaera understood. She would never be his queen in any way that mattered. Never desired, never chosen.
Years before, there was the fall. The rush of air. Stone scraping skin, the awful certainty that she would not rise again. She remembered pain splintering into white nothing, remembered the taste of blood and poppy thick on her tongue. Voices had come and gone like ghosts. And one voice, his voice, had cut through the fog, low and steady, close enough that she might have imagined it.“ If you wish to kill me,“ it had said, “You have to stay alive.“ She had thought it a dream. She had been too broken, too drugged, too close to death to trust her senses. Even now, she did not know if he had truly been there, kneeling in the dark beside her ruined body. Only that the words had stayed. In her loveliest dreams, she might have told him the truth, that he was the one killing her. Slowly. Kindly. With every choice made for her.
At her fifteenth nameday he had gifted her a gown. Teal, they called it, not green. Never green. Amongst other gowns.
The fabric had shimmered like still water at dusk, blue deep enough to swallow the light but touched, just faintly, with something warmer beneath. The color was safe. Teal was not a declaration. Teal did not belong to any faction of ghosts. He had looked at her across the hall only once, and even that glance had been measured, kingly, distant. But she had held onto it like a starving thing. The faint narrowing of his eyes. The way his fingers tightened briefly around the stem of his goblet.
That day, she wore it when Aegon sent for her in the late afternoon, when the light slanted low and unforgiving through the windows of his solar. Jaehaera noted that detail at once. He favored such hours when he wished to speak as king rather than husband, when shadows could be made to do some of the work for him.
“You sent for me,” she said, inclining her head. Not submissive. Never that, merely correct.
“Yes.” He gestured for her to sit, then seemed to reconsider and remained standing himself. His hands were folded behind his back,“You seem… calmer.”
She watched him for a moment before answering. He was already arranged for reassurance. That, too, she noted.
“That I am.”
A flicker crossed his face, relief, unmistakable. It angered her more than suspicion would have.
“I am glad,” he said, and for once it sounded true. “In truth. I understand your frustration. The past days have been…poorly handled.” A pause, carefully measured. “You need not concern yourself with it any longer. I will speak to my Hand. And to Viserys. More directly. You will be protected.”
Jaehaera smiled. Not warmly, not kindly. As one does when a game has finally revealed its board.
“I doubt you will need to.” His brow furrowed.
She did not sit. Instead, she moved closer, slowly, deliberately, until the space between them felt too small to be accidental.
“I may be with child.” For a heartbeat, the room seemed to tilt.
“What?” Aegon said. The word came out sudden, too sharp, repeating himself.
“I was careful,” she went on, her voice almost instructional now, as though she were explaining doctrine. “I would not repeat your mother’s folly. No one will question the child’s heritage . Or his father. He will look enough like you that the realm will accept him.” And accept me, that part was left unsaid.
Aegon’s face drained of color, realization hitting him. “What have you done,” he said, and this time it was not a question.
“What you would not,” she replied. “What you could not bring yourself to do.”
“This is a lie,” he said hoarsely. “You would not dare.” Trying to put distance between them, he stepped back.
“Dare?” Her composure cracked then, just slightly, hysteria flashing through like lightning. “Your mother dared. And you loved her for it.”
His jaw tightened. “This is treason.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“You will be executed for adultery.” His voice came low, whispered. As if he cared. As if he was scared for her.
She let the last thread shatter, “Then so will your brother.” The silence that followed was feral.
“You lie,” he said, but his voice faltered. “You are lying.”
“Tell me,” Jaehaera said, stepping close. Not letting him keep their distance like he always has. “You have never seen how he looks at me. Tell me you have never known.”
“He would not,” Aegon said. “He is my brother.” And it would be almost funny, if that word had actually meant something to her. Brothers kill you, brothers betray you.
“You know your brother,” she whispered. Heart beating so fast she felt like it would break her ribs. “You know when he wants something. He’ll take it.”
“No,”
“And if I am not with child,” she continued, her breath coming faster now, control unraveling, “I will return to his bed. Again. And again.”
Aegon surged forward, rage finally breaking loose. “You will not.” His hands almost reaching to her, to strike her perhaps.
“Why?” she demanded. “Because it shames you? Or because you meant him to replace you?” Her voice shook now, hysteria spilling free. “Your perfect brother. Your chosen heir, yet he did not even wait for your sickness to take hold before coming to me.”
“Enough,” Aegon roared, slamming his fist into the table instead. “Enough.”
She did not stop.
“This will your family’s legacy,” she said, tears burning but unshed. “A child who will carry his betrayal in his blood. You will look at him and hate him. And for once, it will not be because of me.”
“Stop,” he said, his voice breaking. Pleading almost. She wanted to touch him so badly then.
“Or,” she said, stepping into him now, no space between them, hands gripping his cloth, shaking, desperate, “you can take me.”
He froze. Her hands moved, fingers brushing the lacework of the veins on his neck, feeling the rush of blood.
“Take me,” she whispered. “Make the child yours. It may not be. But you will never know. And that will be your mercy.”
His breathing was ragged now, his control shredded.
“Make me yours,” she pleaded, voice collapsing. “Strip my family from me. Leave nothing but you.”
For a moment, Aegon looked at her as though he hated her. Like her father had. Then, as though he hated himself more, he seized her. Giving in.
She touched him like a woman already sentenced.
Not with hunger, not yet. But with the quiet defiance of someone who had nothing left to lose. His fingers hovered at her jaw, unsteady, barely there, as if the act itself might damn him. When his skin brushed hers at last, the contact was light, almost nothing, yet it cut through her all the same.
She did not recoil. He didn’t withdraw. That was what broke her.
He could have stepped away. He had done so before, again and again, burying want beneath guilt, beneath disgust, beneath the careful walls he had spent years erecting. He could’ve turned his back and survived this, as he had survived everything else.
But she was there. Breathing, waiting. She didn’t want him to survive her, but to be his ruin.
Finally, his eyes shifted to her lips while his hands moved to the back of her head, pulling her to him and mounting that final strip of air still between them. She let desire take over and felt herself become completely weightless as their lips touched. He kissed her gently at first, almost reluctantly, but when her lips parted, passion took over and she felt his tongue and his taste. Her hands slid down from his cheeks to his blouse and fumbled with the laced cords. She’d gotten nothing for too long and desired everything. There was no tenderness in it. No restraint, it was sudden, violent in its need, the kind of kiss that stole breath and gave nothing back. His hands closed around her waist as if to anchor himself, sliding up her back. He kissed her like a man starving, and something inside her thawed and screamed in the same breath.
She gasped as his tongue entered her mouth, parting it.
“Where did you let him touch you,” he said hoarsely, pulling back for a breath. Eyes frantic almost, pale eyes meeting her dark ones.
The words should have repulsed her. Instead, they confirmed what she already knew, that this was not just desire cleanly born, but jealousy, rot, possession. That he wanted her.
His hands fumbled at her dress, a curse sharp on his tongue when the knot resisted. Her gown fell in a whisper of fabric, leaving her in a thin nightgown. She tried to undo the lacing on his shirt, but her hands trembled too much and his kiss was too demanding. Encouraged by her attempts, he pulled his mouth away from hers, and pulled his shirt over his head in one supple movement, discarded without care. He stopped. For a heartbeat, and only looked.
Her body was slight, marked, bruises and old wounds on her legs, a reminder of how she had almost died, but it was hers. Bruised, lived in, surviving. He bent and kissed the hollow of her throat, then lower.
“Here?” he murmured, teeth grazing, leaving a sting he soothed later with his mouth. The room feels smaller as he walks her backward. Each step is in hurry. She doesn’t look behind her. She knows where the bed is. She knows the shape of it in the dark. Her father’s bed. The carved posts. The heavy curtains. The place where kings have slept and died. Are you watching me father, she thinks for a moment. She hoped he was.
Her calves hit the edge first. His hands tighten at her waist. She lets herself fall back onto the mattress, hair spilling over the sheets, her nightgown twisting around her thighs. The bed gives beneath her weight with a familiar softness. Watching him from beneath her lashes. Then he’s moving. He follows her down, one knee on the mattress, then the other. The bed dips again, his weight settling over her, caging her in. In a sudden movement, that surprised her more than she’d expected, he pressed his lips onto hers, pushed her back on the sheets and rolled on top of her, keeping most of his weight off her by supporting on his elbows. She wrapped her legs high around his thighs and returned his demanding kisses without hesitation. His hands went down, and down, on the old wounds of her thighs, fingers digging. Her breath broke out from pain. He moved lower, his touch reverent and furious all at once, and when his hand slipped between her thighs and found her ready, he groaned like it was a wound.
“Or here.” His fingers catch the thin strap of her nightgown. Then he drags the fabric down her shoulder. It slips easily, baring pale skin to the cool air of the chamber. The linen pools at her upper arm, caught there, clinging stubbornly before he shoves it aside with impatient fingers. His knuckles brush the curve beneath, and she inhales sharply, just startled, not shy. He looks at her then.
Not at her face. At the newly bared line of her collarbone, the slope of her breast rising with each uneven breath. His expression darkens, something almost wounded flickering there before it is swallowed whole. His hand cups her then, fully, testing the weight of her as though confirming she is real. Not careful, not cruel either. Just firm. His thumb drags across sensitive skin in a slow, deliberate stroke that makes her back arch against the mattress. The reaction seems to undo him. His head lowers.
Not to kiss her mouth this time, but to the exposed curve of her shoulder, then lower, teeth grazing lightly before his lips follow to soothe the mark. The contrast makes her fingers tighten in his hair.
She reached for his hand. Slowly, deliberately, she drew his palm down the front of her shift, past the gentle rise of her belly, until his fingertips brushed the slick between her thighs. “Here,” she whispered.
He exhales against her skin, breath hot “You think this will bind me,” he murmurs, voice rougher now. Her hands slide down his back, nails pressing in just enough to remind him she can wound too.
“No,” she whispers. “I think it already has.” His mouth closes over her again.
As his fingers traced circles on the inside of her legs, she failed miserably to supress a cry of pleasure, while his fingers kept teasing, and she couldn’t think about anything else anymore. There was only him, in every corner of her mind, only him.
When she felt his fingers pressed inside her, she clenched hard enough to steal his breath, and he held her there, steady, relentless, until her body trembled.
“Mine,” he said, looking up at her, voice wrecked. “Yours.” She did not remember saying that. Only the way her body answered for her.
When she broke, it was sudden and uncontained, her weight falling forward into him as he held her through it, gentle only at the end. When he stood, his kiss was rough again, urgent. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, and she wrapped around him without thought, instinct answering where reason had long since fled. The bed gave beneath them.
He entered her harshly, one long thrust, deep and unyielding, until there was nowhere left to go. They froze there, breath tangled, the world narrowed to heat and pulse and the knowledge of what they had done.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered. The press of him, the way his weight pinned her there, the sharpness in his touch that bordered on unkindness, none of it frightened her. It was familiar. So he didn’t.
He took her with the desperation of a man unraveling, his movements harsh, punishing, as if trying to drive something out of himself. Her name fell from his mouth like a confession. She clung to him, nails raking, refusing to let go. He kissed her like devotion and destruction were the same thing. She wrapped herself tighter around him, as if daring him to break her, or keep her, she was no longer certain which she preferred.
When he came, it was broken and breathless, his face buried in her throat as if hiding from the truth of it. Inside her. She hoped it takes root. They collapsed together, slick and shaking, her body curled against him, her fingers tracing his ribs as though trying to remember him by touch alone. Her lips found his pulse, open to her. His head was tipped back, throat bared, mouth parted as if he had forgotten how to close it. Breath dragged in and out of him, uneven, almost pained. His eyes were open but unfocused, pale and glassy, staring at nothing at all. Not at the ceiling. Not at her. Somewhere far past the room, far past the bed. There was no triumph in it. No softness either
They did again, again. Until she was sure she was filled with him. All of him. Later, when he pulled away, when the light caught the sheets, he saw it.
The drops of blood on the sheet. Her lie out in the open, that she was untouched before this. That she had left Viserys confused in his chambers. His breath caught. His eyes, wide and distant, reflected something old and terrible.
Softly, almost kindly, she said, “If you had trusted your brother, you would not have believed me so easily.”
His jaw tightened as if he were bracing against a thought he refused to name. The muscles in his face were rigid, pulled thin by shock and something dangerously close to grief. Whatever heat had driven him moments before was gone now, burned clean out of him, leaving only disbelief in its wake. His lips trembled once, barely, before he pressed them together, as if to keep something from spilling out, regret, anger.
She thought then that she had never seen him so unguarded. So beautiful to her. Not furious, not commanding. Just undone, he looked like a king who had won a battle and lost the war in the same breath.
She rose, kissed him again. Letting her lips brush his swollen one’s, her let her. “You will learn to forgive me for this,” she whispered.
And that, more than anything, made her happy. Fire destroyes everything by nature. But blood remained.