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The small council had been in session for two hours and, where years before Baelor found little trouble keeping his attention, in the past year — particularly the past eight moons — his mind had wandered to but one object of his attention.
Maekar Targaryen, fourth-born son and first omega child of Daeron the Good, had begun his confinement a matter of weeks ago.
Baelor was giddy at the thought. Deep within the confines of Maegor’s Holdfast, his brother lay fat and heavy, rounded by their first child.
They had not even been married a full year, but already, Maekar had grown fecund with evidence of Baelor’s complete adoration of him.
Truthfully, Baelor thought, Maekar might have been seeded even before the wedding. His youngest brother was simply impossible to keep his hands from.
Maekar had been equally wanton. He had bullied Baelor against the wall, hand on his cock, begging for just a touch, a lick. Just the head held inside his cunt. Just an inch more.
Theirs had not been the first wedding carried out in the Great Sept, but Baelor thought it had been the grandest. Surely, no other bride had looked as fine as Maekar, when Baelor had removed the maiden's cloak, Targaryen and Martell per pale across the back, replacing it with his own. Maekar’s hand had stolen up, clutching around his new gift, as if worried it would fall.
Lord Penrose had begun an explanation of the most recent trade tariffs imposed by Braavos, and Baelor attempted to appear properly engaged. It wouldn’t do for the heir to the throne to be caught vacant.
But he wasn’t simply the heir to the throne. He was an expectant father, a jubilant spouse. He wanted nothing more than to spend his hours with Maekar in his lap, his hands around his brother’s stomach. He remembered first feeling their child kick against him. How very wonderful it was.
Suddenly, the door to the council chambers swung open, and a servant came dashing in, running to Daeron’s side.
Baelor shifted in his seat, the warrior’s blood in him screaming that something grave was awry.
His father leaned towards the messenger, his expression drawing more and more grave before he nodded, sending the younger man away.
Daeron took a breath, as if he was steadying himself, and did not address the council, but turned solely to Baelor.
“Your brother’s labours have begun.”
Breath was stolen from his lungs. Baelor didn’t wait for pause or permission; he cared not for the opinions of his father’s council or the whispering servants. He stood from the table, chair clattering behind him, and ran.
Maekar. He turned through the corridors, drawing closer to the rooms he and his mate had been granted. Maekar.
His heart thundered, caught between elation and trepidation.
When Maekar had told Baelor of the maester’s news, he had picked his little brother up and swung him around in his arms. He had laughed, and Maekar had flustered at him before joining in.
The wonder of his little brother, catching so quickly after their wedding. And how Maekar paraded himself about the Red Keep. He grew quickly, his skin protesting, crying out in silvery lines that Baelor delighted in kissing.
Despite being the furthest in age, he and Maekar had always been the closest of the king’s sons. Baelor had been seven, his arms sure around the screaming infant, and when Maekar quieted for him alone, Baelor knew they were fated.
He had cooed at Maekar in his crib, held him on unsteady legs. Baelor had been the one to help him on his first horse, put the first sword in his hand.
When Baelor unhorsed Daemon at his aunt Daenerys’s wedding tourney, he had granted his aunt the title of Queen of Love and Beauty, but it was Maekar who received a floral crown of his own making afterwards.
I wanted it to have been you¸ Baelor had whispered, afterwards, pressing searing kisses against Maekar’s neck. Understand, sweet brother. It will always be you.
It was Maekar, broad of shoulder, full of breast, who visited Baelor’s nightly dreams. Haunted them. Even before Maekar had flowered, Baelor had watched him. Had been haunted by the scent of him, one that cried out in perfect harmony with Baelor’s own.
There goes my queen, he had thought, the only one I would let stand beside me. My better and my equal.
His better, Baelor was sure of now. He drew closer to their bedchamber and knew that only his better could lie and labour for love of him. Giving himself to the most worthy of pursuits.
The door pushed open, and Baelor slowly immersed himself in the scene.
Their rooms had become filled with midwives and maesters, each called forth by Daeron personally to attend to his youngest son, ever the baby of their family.
Baelor wished to laugh. His brother would soon be replaced by another baby. But he would always remain innocent to Baelor. Even when bent on all fours, chest and belly heaving as Baelor worked his way into him, there was still an ever-present glow to Maekar. Youth and purity, reliant on his brother to tell him the ways of the world. Pregnancy had made him sweet in a way he seldom was for anyone aside from Baelor.
They had been made for it, he and Maekar together. Aerys had been snide when he named Maekar another Alysanne, but Baelor had thrilled at it. A queen to remain by his side. A castle filled with children born from their love.
Maekar had grumbled at the name, seated pertly in Baelor’s lap.
Alysanne, he had sneered. The Good Queen. I would rather have my name known as a warrior.
Baelor had been helpless but to kiss him.
She was a dragonrider, one who hatched the great Silverwing. Had they lived, I could see you atop the beast.
And you, Maekar had inquired. What would become of you?
Baelor had pushed him to the bed, careful of their child’s swell.
I would be beside you, astride Vermithor.
Maekar had bitten at him that night, ferocious in his claiming. His nails had scratched, and their blood had mingled, and Baelor had arisen the next morning to Maekar still dripping with his spend, splayed within cotton sheets, reaching for him once more.
The image of that night is still with him when Baelor’s gaze falls to Maekar upon their bed.
The sight is not one he has prepared for.
Maekar lies, partially supported by a league of pillows, and his skin has turned nearly as pale as his hair. Blood leaks from between his legs, and Baelor does not need to hold his hand to know the grip upon the bedsheets is weak.
It is not the brother he knows. Maekar is strong. The creature before him is failing.
Then, Maekar’s face contorts, his body responding to Baelor’s scent. Desperation and relief fill lilac eyes as they turn towards his own. They have gone dark and fevered, painfully young in their fear. His hand trembles as it rises, reaches.
“Maekar,” Baelor falls to his knees beside his mate, taking his hand into his own, leaving kisses across scar-knotted knuckles. “My darling. My brave, brave love.”
“Baelor. Baelor, please—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, for one of the midwives turns to mop up a pool of blood that seeps onto the linens, and Maekar’s head is thrown back, every vein in his neck straining as he cries through the contraction.
Terror brings another wave of life to him and Baelor is for once glad of it.
“I cannot— I— Gods, Baelor, please. Please, help me. Stop it, make it go away!”
Baelor’s heart drops. In that moment, Maekar is far younger than his five-and-ten years. No, he is closer to five, burying his head in his brother’s shirt, searching for safety.
“You are so close now,” he says, placing his hand on Maekar’s stomach, feeling the trembling contractions. “Just a short while more and she’ll be here.”
The words reach something in Maekar that even Baelor is not completely familiar with. He can recognise it, surely, but to know it is something else entirely, and Baelor comes fractionally close when the words gentle his brother, soothing him by fractions.
Maekar’s face briefly flashes with a smile, no less bright for its brevity.
“Yes. She’ll be here. Very well.”
Another contraction seizes him, and Maekar’s eyes squint close as he grunts.
“Fuck!”
Bit by bit, their child inches closer to them.
One of the septas soon approaches Baelor, daring to place a hand on him, and pulls him from the room.
“It is not right, Your Grace. The maesters will have brother and babe well.”
Maekar sends him one final look, and Baelor longs to push the woman away, to remain at his brother’s side, but then the septa is joined by his father. His father, who must have followed him from the small council chambers. His father, who cherished Maekar nearly as much as Baelor himself did.
“Come, Baelor. It is not pleasant to watch,” his father’s hands press against his back. “Trust your brother to do his duty.”
His father pushes him from the room, from Maekar’s whimpering cry, and Baelor allows it. He is to inherit all his father is, one day. If the king bids him wait outside, Baelor will wait outside. He will offer prayers to Mother and Maiden and place Maekar’s terror far from his mind.
A number of soft words from Daeron have servants scattering to fetch the Queen.
Baelor takes a moment, pushing past his apprehension. His father knows well the cycles of childbirth. There is little reason to fear with him at his side.
Daeron loves his sons dearly and has never attempted to hide that fact. There had even been nights where Baelor had shared a cup of wine with him, and his father’s eyes had wetted and tendered. He had spoken softly of his own, gentler excitement for a grandchild.
Baelor again feels that excitement rise. It had seemed possible, that night, for he and Maekar to be everything their parents were. That they would bring the realm an heir to adore, their parents a grandchild to dote upon, and themselves…
Baelor had drunk his father’s wine and filled himself with thoughts of Maekar holding a squirming child. A little baby waiting for he and Maekar to love it.
He already had. A look at Maekar, always with a hand pressed to his stomach, wistful grin upon his face, was all needed to tell him Maekar felt the same.
The quick pace of tapping heels pulls Baelor’s head toward his mother, racing down the corridor.
She doesn’t pause for her husband or son, pushing her way into the birthing chamber.
Her attitude is not surprising, not for Baelor the son or Baelor the good-son. It had been Myriah who had contested their wedding the loudest. The most vitriolic. It was not her custom, after all, that saw siblings wed.
Maekar had been freshly presented. A perfect omega, just as Baelor knew he would be, to match the alpha heir. They had spent years denying themselves, but when Maekar had come to him, smelling of a heat barely passed, neither had waited.
When Baelor brought him before their parents, Daeron sat at his desk, lake-still. Maekar’s hand had been firm in his own until their mother drew closer, pulling his cheek into her hand.
Myriah had shaken her head, dropping her hand from Maekar’s face to leave behind a boy who had become far more terrified. She had fixed Baelor with a look, and the chill of it had shocked him.
“A boy. He is but a boy of five-and-ten, and he will bleed to give you an heir. How many women in this kingdom would have been glad to do the same? Women properly flowered, not the child-bride you have made your brother.”
She had left the room, leaving it chided. Silent under the weight of her condemnation.
The Queen’s silence hadn’t lasted, but Baelor knew it was broken for Maekar’s sake, not his. He knew that it was his mother’s bridal cloak that she presented to Maekar, and that it was she who helped him work the red dragon onto it.
His mother had approached him at their wedding feast, fractures beginning to spread across her composure.
“Look after my little boy,” was all she had said.
Baelor had done as she bid, had been glad to do so. He had stolen Maekar away before the bedding ceremony could happen. He had been gentle in their marital bed, as if it were the first time. He had Maekar screaming for him, clawing at his back, urging him on, and he had delighted in silencing the rumours bolder servants thought to spread of their wedding night.
Mounted as if he were a dragon true.
Rode him ‘til dawn.
Maekar had flushed a delightful red, hearing Baelor recount them. But Maekar’s embarrassment was for him alone to covet. To adore.
If he had been greedy over his youngest brother before, it was nothing compared to what the sight of Maekar swollen with child did to him. The creature who had followed Baelor about the training yard, through the nursery, had become Baelor’s own light. Someone who compelled him forward, chasing the taste of smoke and cinder.
Baelor could not remember what life was without his brother. He had supposedly lived seven years absent him. An impossibility.
Time passes, the sun sinking, filling the Red Keep with amber light, inflaming the painted walls.
Baelor sits and paces and speaks with his father, every hope and dream spilling from him. Aerys comes by for academic curiosity and leaves just as quickly. Rhaegel is accompanied by his latest favourite, and he brings Baelor an apple for his supper.
Baelor pulls Rhaegel into an embrace, pleased that his brother allows it, declaring that Rhaegel and Aerys will soon meet their niece.
Eventually, Maekar’s cries stop, and, within Baelor, relief battles with excitement. His brother’s pain has ended. His first child is born.
Baelor gasps, his heart too large for his chest. Behind the door is his child. Son or daughter, dark-haired or silver, whatever form they existed in, Baelor already loves them. A host of Braavosi sellswords could burst through the castle gates, Baelor would go and slay each one of them before the child had a chance to cry.
Baelor looks to his father, the elation unable to leave his face as he grins.
“It is your first grandchild, Father.”
But Daeron’s expression is not as free. He only watches the door, frowning.
Baelor feels his own smile slip away. Something is wrong.
There is another noise, fainter, and for a moment Baelor thinks it is the babe. But when his mother leaves the room, the open door allows the sound to slip out, and it is not a child. It is Maekar. He is weeping.
Myriah takes a moment to settle herself before she meets Baelor’s gaze. His heart freezes for his mother’s face is cast in a grey pallor. There are tears in her eyes.
His mother watches him, and Baelor knows that, whatever comes next, she will not butcher her words. It has never been her way.
“Maekar lives. But your daughter was born dead.”
Baelor knows his mother. The words are not made to be cruel. They are to vanquish all hope in him. They will dissuade him of the notion that the maesters have made a terrible mistake. He is heir to the Iron Throne, so he will face this duty as any other.
He has a daughter, and she is dead.
Baelor draws back from his parents and their too-knowing eyes. His head shakes in denial, continues to do so even as his back hits the far wall and strength flees him. The dark of the ground calls its tempting song.
“No.”
Daeron sighs, bowing his head. There are no tears yet, merely the quiet of resignation. Of a man who has watched before as his own siblings came into the world, bloodied and silent.
“My son…” He trails off, making a halting step towards Baelor. Baelor bats his father’s outstretched hand away.
“No.”
His chest has doubled in size. That must be the reason for the sudden weight of it. Some traitor has poisoned him. That is why his heart breaks.
Baelor’s knees tremble and then fail him. He collapses to the floor suddenly, but the cold does not shock him; heat has already been stolen away. The pain does not wound him; he is already numb.
What pain could be greater?
Baelor had prayed for a girl. He had cared not for thrones and inheritances. He had not worried for titles and land. He wanted a girl cast in his beloved’s image. One who would adore Baelor and her mother equally. A comfort in their old age.
Such a future collapses. He had prayed for a girl, and a girl he received. Baelor gasps at the cruelty of it.
He catches his head in his hands, bracing himself between his bent knees. Bile rises; he will surely cast up his breakfast. The acid of the apple burns at the back of his throat, and Baelor damns Rhaegel for his sweet kindness. His vision blurs, his head pounds.
The ochre of his mother’s shoes appears before him. Myriah crouches down to join her eldest. Her arms are careful as they hold Baelor, pulling him to her chest as if he were once more a babe. He grasps at her desperately. His face buries into her shoulder as he wails.
His girl, his girl. His little girl.
Myriah allows him but a handful of seconds before she pries him away.
“Go to him.”
At her words, Baelor remembers.
Maekar lives. His brother, his bride. Maekar lives and must now spend the rest of his life remembering the babe that died in his womb.
Suddenly, Baelor yearns for the warmth of Maekar beside him. He needs his omega, the calming lull of his scent that sang Baelor to sleep too many nights to count. He needs the presence of the only other soul who understands the magnitude of such loss.
Lifted to his feet by Daeron, Baelor stumbles to his brother’s chambers. One foot presses in front of the other. Inches take years to cross.
He is before the door, closed over by his mother, blocking the sight and sound of Maekar’s grief, and, for a second, Baelor falters. He can barely comprehend his own; what will it be to burden Maekar’s too?
His mother tarries at his back. Her hand on his shoulder is firm.
“You do not comfort him as a brother. He cannot be that any longer.”
In Myriah’s sentence, Baelor witnesses another loved one’s death. He sees the boy Maekar was, mussed hair and full cheeked and huffing, and knows that, to Baelor at least, he is dead.
Baelor can never again be the gallant older brother, giving shoulder rides. He cannot swap carrots for asparagus on their dinner plate. He can no longer leave Maekar pouting at the window while he and his friends go hunting. That luxury is gone.
Instead, Baelor must be a husband. He must be a father. He must be firm and steady and an anchor to Maekar’s storm.
He pushes the door open. He is immediately overwhelmed by the scent of death.
Sweat lingers sourly, blood tints the air. Maesters and midwives glance at the Prince of Dragonstone and quickly throw their eyes away.
They are worried he will blame them.
Was it Maegor who had the midwives slain? Did Jaehaerys kill the maids who could not save his Daenerys?
Baelor thinks he almost understands them.
He stops, suddenly, for his eyes have at last landed on the person he loves above all others.
He beholds the broken form of his brother.
Maekar’s legs are sprawled before him, covered only in the ruin of a nightgown that has become stained with birthing blood. His back is slouched from its once-proud form, his arms disbelieving around a blanket of unspeakable worth and sorrow.
Maekar is curved over the earthly remains of their daughter, arms holding her delicate head steady. A finger of one hand makes small, circular movements across her cheek. The smallest murmuring sound tells Baelor that his brother is whispering to her.
He thinks he recognises the lullaby. It rends his soul in twain.
Maekar pauses, having heard Baelor’s approach. His head doesn’t turn, his form speaking instead of a child afraid they had been found out doing something wrong. As if Maekar had ever done anything worthy of shame.
It is only in that moment that Baelor realises how small his brother is.
A boy.
Baelor’s stomach turns. He thinks of his grandmother and finds himself disgusted.
“Maekar…”
Baelor reaches towards his beloved and the child that is kept against his breast. He wishes to comfort his brother. He wishes to look upon their baby.
Maekar flinches from him, turning away and taking their daughter with him.
“Don’t.”
Baelor knows why Maekar does so. He understands that the omega cannot face being parted from the girl he spent close to a year carrying, nurturing, loving. That it is something beyond conscious thought, something as deep in his blood as dragon fire is. But the rejection wounds Baelor all the same.
“My love—”
“You swore, brother. You promised me all would be well.”
Liar. The condemnation echoes. Baelor Breakspear, the realm’s pride. Look at what your poisoned tongue has wrought.
What is worse is the cadence of Maekar’s voice. It is not that of a man grown, but a young boy who was sure of his elder brother. Who trusted Baelor’s confidence as if it were his own. It is the voice of a boy betrayed, the confusion in the magnitude of how much he has been failed.
“Liar,” he condemns so succinctly.
Worse than that, beloved. Worse and worse.
“Yes,” Baelor agrees, for what else can be said? He had ignored the advice of maesters, the advice of his mother, for he had been convinced of his own righteousness. Because Maekar had begged him.
Had Maekar begged? Or had he batted his eyelashes, and Baelor saw in them the answer he wanted to see? He had wanted the child true enough, had been giddy about his pregnancy at times, but where had the idea been born? Which brother had planted the seeds of this doom?
Baelor forces himself closer. Maekar needs him, of that there is no doubt. Maekar cannot be left alone amidst this impossible grief.
“May I see her?”
Maekar tenses even more. The fall of his silver hair obscures his face from Baelor’s view. His head shakes in a child’s denial. As if their daughter were another toy Maekar could not stand his brother sharing.
“Maekar, please.” There is such shame in how his voice breaks. “She is mine too.”
Maekar’s cold front trembles. He shakes and denies.
“No. She’s not. Not like she is mine.”
And, oh, wasn’t it true? What claim could Baelor make that Maekar could not match? Did Maekar feel the moment she died? Would it be better or worse if he had?
“I know, Maekar. I know.”
Baelor had celebrated his nameday three moons past. A man of two-and-twenty. But, when he sits on his marital bed, when his mate’s blood begins to soak into his trousers, when he watches his brother sit completely still with his equally silent babe, he feels six years old. Just as lost and helpless.
He and his wedded bride, little more than children.
“I know she’s yours, Maekar,” Baelor keeps his voice soft, for that is the very least he can give Maekar now. He could not even give him a living child. He summons the last dregs of his courage, of his composure, and takes a breath because Baelor Targaryen is greedy and he is weak. “But can she not also be mine? Even for an hour?”
A day, a year, ten. Let me claim her with as much pride as is left to me. She is my firstborn, and she will always be so. If there is any authority left in my name, let it be given to her.
Maekar flinches beneath the words, but he does not deny them. They wait together, alone in the room, their strange family of three.
Slowly, Maekar unravels. He draws up and away, and Baelor sees first the red of his eyes, the steady fall of tears. He sees hands made firm by the training yard holding tight to a pale yellow blanket. A nursing gift from their mother, red dragons dancing around amber suns. Maekar’s nails bite into the embroidery. Threads come apart.
Maekar pulls back, dark lilac eyes agonising in their emptiness as he watches Baelor, and Baelor’s gaze falls to—
Oh.
There she is.
Baelor’s first thought is that no babe has ever looked as beautiful.
His second is that no babe has looked as small. As still.
“She’s perfect.” Baelor had not thought to speak, but the words came anyway.
Maekar scoffs, and it is so close to his usual haughty sulking that it near enough drives Baelor to madness.
“Of course she is,” his brother replies, far softer than he should. “She is your blood and mine.”
She was made in love, Baelor wishes to say in challenge. How could a creature made in love be anything but?
But maybe. Maybe. It is a traitorous voice, but it creeps in, cold, pooling across his soul.
Maybe there was a sin to be found somewhere. A toll. That she was grown in his brother, his kin, his blood. That the septons had reason to forbid fornication between kin so close. Why else would a princess, a child of dragons, be born so still? Why was such a wholly perfect child to be denied even one cry?
Even still, Baelor rebels against the notion. It couldn’t be so. They were blood of the dragon, were they not? The power of their house lay its foundations upon the fact.
Blood of the dragon. They had even picked out an egg for the babe. Cold and unmoving, white swirls stretching across the pale green of its scales.
No. There is no answer to be found, only the silence of a dead child.
The hair sitting on her crown is the colour of moonlight.
It is that fact that bows Baelor in two. His perfect daughter, dragon-blooded, silver and starlit like her mother. She would not have been denied, not in the way he was. What lord or lady could say there was a stink off her? Not when she is pure and clean, even beneath the final light of day.
She is everything Baelor dreamt of.
Suddenly, Maekar’s arms thrust forward, and he turns his head away.
“Take her.” The room turns silent, and Baelor watches, aghast. It is not enough for Maekar, who thrusts the girl forward again, something in his voice unravelling. “Fucking take her!”
He acts on instinct, fearful of the madness lighting through Maekar’s frame. In an instant, Baelor has her, the girl’s body still warm from her mother’s hold. His hands are broad and calloused and ugly. They should never have touched Maekar, never mind their sweet girl. But they reach for her nonetheless.
His arms wrap around her naturally, and even now, Baelor knows he was put on this earth to be a father.
Baelor traces the small, formless expression on her pale face. He keeps his touch light, as if it were never there. Maybe, if he is careful enough, she will wake to a world that is gentle enough to earn her love.
He rocks her, shushing at a girl who will never make a sound.
Baelor would trade every one of his titles, all his wealth, all his power. He would relinquish it, just for his daughter’s chest to move with breath.
“Vaera.”
The shock of the name tears Baelor’s eyes to Maekar. His brother has pulled his legs to his chest, wrapping his arms around them in a facsimile of comfort. He looks out of the window, west to the setting sun.
“Her name is Vaera.”
They had spoken of names. Of the wish to give their first child one all of their own. A name unburdened by victories or mistakes or pain. A new name, for their child to shape, not the other way round.
Vaera.
Baelor nods. His tears fall in a torrent. It fits her perfectly.
Soon, the septons speak to the King and Queen, who in turn speak to their sons.
“It is ill-fortune to keep her here for any longer,” Daeron announces to the room, but keeps his eyes on his granddaughter, held to Maekar’s weeping chest. “Do her this final kindness. Allow her to join her ancestors.”
Baelor knows what it entails. She is Targaryen. She will be burned at the new day’s dawn.
He cups her head and chokes back a sob. His daughter deserves more than ashes and soot. She deserves the kingdom at her feet.
Maekar remains silent, holding Vaera close but unable to face her.
“Then set me on the pyre beside her.”
Daeron only sighs, grief long having made his acquaintance.
“You know what you ask. You know why I cannot give you the answer you want.”
Baelor hears what his father truly says.
I cannot become you. I cannot survive the death of my child.
Baelor knows that Maekar is the strongest of their family. His father's words only confirm a long-held truth. He presses his lips to the side of Maekar’s head, kissing his ear.
“We owe her better than rot.”
Maekar stiffens and pulls away from him. After a moment, he nods.
Vaera is lifted from his arms, away from a breast she will never drink from. Maekar’s fingers follow her, reach for her until she is gone from him entirely. Slipped away. Then, Maekar brings his arms around his own torso, trusting none other’s comfort.
Baelor holds Vaera close and knows that, were she alive, she would cry from the tightness of his embrace.
When the Silent Sisters come, he cannot relinquish her. He cannot bid her farewell.
His father’s hands around his own are what finally weaken them.
“You will see the kindness of it in time, my son.”
Baelor does not believe him.
House Targaryen stands before the Kingswood.
It is a small funeral. Their parents, the High Septon. Elaena stands with her husband and her granddaughter, Aerys's betrothed. Aerys himself is at her side, hand coming to rest upon Baelor's shoulder just once. The squeeze of his grip says more than any of his books could hope to contain. Rhaegel's own gaze is distant as he mouths words Baelor will never understand.
The pyre built is obscene in its size. It could cradle two men grown. In a way, it does.
Vaera looks minuscule atop it.
Maekar is before them all, hands clenched at his sides. His figure is slight, frail-looking, now that his stomach is again flat. Rhaegel attempts to take one hand in his own, and Maekar's full-bodied flinch sends their brother scurrying back to the queen's side, tears of his own pressing against her shoulder.
In days long gone, Baelor would have commanded his dragon to light the flame. Or maybe Maekar would have done so. He has often wondered what it would be like to steal Maekar away, up into the distant heavens.
Instead, the High Septon holds the torch before them both, and neither Baelor nor Maekar can compel themselves to take it.
Daeron instead walks forward and commits his granddaughter to flame. The fire catches quickly in the dry winter air, licking up the wooden pyre until, eventually, it catches onto Vaera, consuming her swaddling blanket.
It is then that Maekar collapses, and his mouth opens around an inhuman sound. An animal is in the forest, and it is dying.
It is years before Baelor can stand before a hearth fire without the pain of memory.
They move through life as if it were mud: slow, and messy, and cold.
At night, Baelor tries to hold his brother close, but Maekar only pushes him away, petulant as a child. On kinder nights, he allows it, frozen stiff and still.
A matter of weeks ago, they could not press close enough to each other’s body. It had been that way since Maekar had grown old enough to toddle from his own bedroom to his brother’s. At a certain age, the septons had placed them apart, and the chambermaids had kept them away. It only made the longing madder.
Innocent embraces or sweat-slicked passions. Under the cover of night or hidden at midday. However Maekar came to him – however Baelor came to his brother – it always felt like relief. Baelor never slept as well before marriage finally allowed Maekar in his bed the night through.
Now, Baelor sleeps fitfully, haunted by nightmares, silver-haired babes who drown in blood. Maekar does not sleep at all.
Two mornings in a row, he pours boiling water over his hand without realising. Bubbling scars creep along his skin. Rhaegel cups his hands over his ears, eyes pressed closed, so distressed is he by the sight.
Baelor knows that continuing as he is will kill Maekar and tear their family even further apart.
Their rooms had been redecorated over the past few moons, changing to accommodate a nursing child who would soon be with them.
Now, the nursery furniture has become its own agony.
There are books unopened, toys not played with, a crib that lies empty.
After one too many nights of half-sleep, waking up with the bed cold beside him, running to find Maekar standing silent before the empty crib, pushing at it mindlessly, Baelor has the servants remove it from their room.
Maekar howls at him when he learns of it.
“It was mine! Mother gifted it to me!” No matter how hard Maekar shoves his chest, Baelor will not move.
The crib had been their own, commissioned by the Prince of Dorne for his daughter’s first child, holding each one she bore the Dragon King. Fitting, for the first grandchild of a king to sleep in the same cradle that held her parents.
Baelor grabs his brother’s wrists, tired of his petty arguments.
“If you do not sleep, I will have it burned.”
He would have been as well to strike Maekar, withering under the hurt, empty look he receives.
“I have burned enough of what I love for you.”
Maekar does not speak to him for two weeks.
Baelor sits on the carpet, going through the small chest where all of the clothes that would have been worn by Vaera have been placed. Some were handed down from their own swaddling, others had been made new by their mother. Others still had been made by Maekar in the final moons. They are the poorest made, the untidiest, the least beautiful.
Baelor pulls one dress out, looks carefully at the crooked hemline, the misshapen embroidered suns. One sleeve is longer than the other, and each stitch appears as if it had taken an hour to make.
When their child was first presented to the court, Baelor had wanted them dressed in it.
It strikes him that even if he and Maekar have another child, they will never again have Vaera. They will never parent their sweet, silent girl. They will never soothe her teething pains, never hold her hand as she takes her first hesitant steps. They will never shine with pride at her maiden’s day celebrations, nor will they worry over suitors coming to win her, unable to meet the demands of her doting parents.
Baelor realises that he is weeping when the dress darkens with tears. He pushes it back into the chest and slams the lid closed. He asks the chambermaids to place it in the darkest storage room the Red Keep can offer, and demands that it is never brought into the light.
He never sees it again.
One evening, Baelor excuses himself from a dinner that Maekar has once again missed and tries to ignore the pitying looks he is given as he leaves.
(That Aerys has curbed his sarcasm, even quietly offering to come with Baelor to the sept. That Baelor has walked in on Rhaegel sitting beside Maekar, doing naught but pressing against his side. These are the wounds that linger.)
Coming back to their rooms, Baelor sees Maekar before the empty fireplace. A pillow is in his lap while he thumbs through a children’s book.
All at once, Baelor aches with how desperately he misses his mate.
He comes to Maekar’s back, holding him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder and allowing no more.
“Forgive me,” he whispers, for he knows no other way to ask it.
Maekar stills, then his back crumbles, and he turns to throw himself into Baelor’s hold, sobbing.
“I miss her. Bring her back. Bring her back to me. She was my baby. My first baby.”
There are no words to offer, so Baelor rocks them both to stillness.
Three moons are all that pass before Maekar once more comes down with heat.
Baelor minded his mother’s warning, but it’s nothing when he opens the chamber door to Maekar in bed, waring with the sheets, dripping wet, and panting for him.
“Brother, please,” he paws at Baelor’s cock, “I cannot bear it.” Maekar’s hips buck, his cunt grinds into the mattress. Tears stream from his eyes, and his own nails scratch at his skin, bringing thin trails of blood forth. “It is agony.”
Baelor knows it must be so. And he is weak. His cock stiffens, his brother rises to hump at him, and his mother’s voice disappears.
He is heir to the realm, and he is weak.
He grabs at Maekar, hands pressing against fevered skin, made pliable in his hold. Maekar himself turned from surly and crass to a creature almost sweet.
That’s what he always was to Baelor: his own sweetling.
Baelor crawls over Maekar, enjoying the simple feeling of his husband’s grip, desperate for him and only him. Clothes all but dissolve from him.
The last time Baelor had him, he had been forced to work around the swell of his pregnant belly.
Pain strikes through him, and so Baelor stifles it from his mind. Maekar is fevered; he deserves Baelor’s attention on him, not the spectre that haunts every other waking moment of their lives.
When he presses into his brother, Baelor’s arms nearly fail him. Maekar’s cunt is always perfect, warm and wet, and during his heat it is drenched. Childbirth has made it no less tight, and the hungry little mouth swallows his cock whole.
Their hips meet, and Baelor takes a moment to simply breathe. To enjoy the moment of connection. The mark he once placed at the base of his brother's throat demands it, after all. It will not allow either of them rest until such a call is answered.
But Maekar is impatient with him. Long, muscular legs cross over Baelor’s hip as his mate bucks up, skin tacky, slapping sounds echoing in the bedchamber.
“Fuck me.”
It is remarkably easy to do so.
They find their rhythm easily. Every stroke seems to drive Maekar’s fever hotter, his cries pitching higher. A base call within Baelor answers, demands he pin his mate down, take what he is offered. Take more.
Claim him, blood calls out, demanding he take his due. Knot him. Breed him.
He presses Maekar’s wrists high up the bed, watching the muscles stretch, the rivets of sweat dipping into the pale hair of his armpit. The smell is intoxicating.
Maekar squirms underneath, panting. Baelor thrusts into him, watching the bounce of his mate’s breasts, still filled with milk for their girl.
Then, Maekar’s eyes fill with tears.
“Give me another one. Let me do it right this time.”
It stops Baelor at once, breaks his heart even further than he thought able to give.
“You did nothing wrong.”
Maekar’s face darkens. He breaks from Baelor’s hold, fingers gripping the unshaved sides of his mate’s face, his fury agonising.
“No. Fuck you. Why else is she dead?”
Because I had my way with you then, when you were still but a child. Because I have my way with you now, when both our hearts are asunder.
“Maekar—”
The world inverts, and Baelor finds himself on his back, Maekar crouching above him. There is pressure around his throat as his brother growls down at him.
Something primal in him rises as if in challenge, the instinct every alpha possesses, but Baelor tries to temper it. His hands grasp the generous swell of Maekar’s buttocks. He wants to force his brother beneath him; he wants to eat him whole.
There are fields and seas between them.
Maekar’s head tilts back. An expression of ecstasy as much as it is him avoiding Baelor’s questioning gaze.
“Harder. So it’s the only thing. Make me forget, just for an hour. Fuck me until I can’t think of anything else. Make me a hole for you. Mightn’t hurt so bad, to just be your fucking hole.”
You are my world. The words sit berry ripe upon his tongue, but the last dregs of reason tell Baelor that soft things are not what Maekar desires. They may not even be what he needs.
So Baelor only tightens his hold, helps Maekar spear himself upon his cock again and again. He pretends that it is enough.
Both of them wake later, the sun having risen and again set, dawn pale grey and just out of reach.
Baelor wakes first, instinctively scenting the air to find the reek of Maekar’s fevers has left them. Another heat has passed.
His arms have found his bride in the middle of the night, and Baelor looks down at the delicate stardust of hair that becomes Maekar so well.
Yet his hold also feels ensnaring, so Baelor moves to untangle them, and so doing wakes Maekar all the same.
Settled on his back, the violet of Maekar’s eyes blink slowly into awareness. A flash of discomfort flinches across his face as Maekar pushes himself onto his elbows, gaze falling to his stomach.
To the delicate little swell of his stomach and the pearly seed that still leaks from it.
His face turns blank, and Baelor stares at Maekar as his brother stares at his freshly ploughed womb.
“Oh,” it stumbles out like the first drops of rain. The ripples spread out, lapping against Baelor’s ankles.
“Sweetness—”
“It probably didn’t even take. Maybe it shouldn’t. Children should grow somewhere safer than me.”
If a heart could be frozen over, surely that is what became of Maekar’s then. Freezing to match where Baelor’s weeps.
Maekar had never possessed confidence of the self. Pride? To be certain, it was his by the bucket. But pride’s whispers were not always kind. The way Maekar avoided his own gaze in the mirror, the way he picked at the angry scars left by the pox. Wounds that went beyond vanity, how he flinched from their father’s compliments, the king’s complaints.
The way he thought himself flawed from a happenstance of nature Baelor had placed in him.
“It wounds me when you speak of yourself like this,” Baelor reaches for Maekar, seeking his warmth. “You wound me, Maekar.”
Didn’t he understand? Couldn’t he see? What was Baelor, without Maekar at his side? How could a creature who so completely fostered another be anything less than perfect?
Perfect for me, brother. I always knew it to be so.
At his touch, Maekar only flinches away, hissing at him.
“It is not your pain to carry!”
And wasn’t that the horrid truth?
At haste, Maekar rises, dressing himself in days-old clothing, turning from the room.
“I am going to see Rhaegel.” Baelor loathes himself, for a pit in him burned with jealousy for their sweet, lost brother. A brother that can speak to Maekar in a way Baelor knows not how. “I will see you at dinner.”
With little more ceremony, Maekar quits the room, the oaken door thundering closed behind him.
Baelor feels himself collapse back into the sheets that smell of his beloved. Of them both.
He presses his palms into the hollows of his eyes, trying to relish the false light the ache brings forth.
They pass the next seven weeks strangely. They eat together and sleep together, and Baelor is lucky to draw more than ten words from his brother in a day.
There is an emptiness between them. An emptiness where a crib should be.
The change happens suddenly, three moons from the year’s end, winter showing no signs of lifting.
As Baelor goes to push into Maekar’s study, sore for want of him, Maester Kaeth nearly collides with him on the way out.
“Oh,” Kaeth exclaims, seemingly shocked to find the Crown Prince outside his own chambers. “Excuse me, Your Grace.”
Baelor nods and excuses the man, desperate in his need to return to his brother’s side, worry crawling through his marrow at what news might face him.
Seated carefully upon one of their dining chairs, Maekar’s head rises from where it had bowed, face almost relaxed in its surprise, mouth dropping gently open as Baelor takes his fill of the sight. He stands on trembling legs.
He is still so young. Young and beautiful.
Purple eyes meet their almost-twin, and Baelor’s wordless question is answered by a small nod, lips unsure as they try to smile.
Baelor marches to his brother’s side, cupping the omega’s hands, ceasing their worried fidgeting. Each silver ring is glorious to feel, their wedding band most of all.
He nods at Maekar, the backs of his eyes itching as they fight tears.
“It is a happy occasion,” Baelor informs his brother, his mate, forcing himself to believe it. “A good thing. A very good thing.”
Maekar’s chest constricts in a halting breath. He nods, brings their joined hands closer to his womb.
“A good thing.”
A child rests beneath blood and bone, awaiting their loving hold.
They allow a week or so to pass, covetous of the news. It is for them and them alone, and now it must be tempered not by expectation, but by a knowledge that should not have been theirs. The King and Queen are informed, and Baelor would love them for nothing else but how they take it in stride.
Myriah is ever so slightly careful when she pulls her youngest son into her hold.
Before the announcement can be made to the small council and then the court, Baelor wakes to Maekar kneeling at their bed’s end, the sheets beneath him laden with blood.
Tears trail down the length of Maekar’s face, but he makes no other sound.
Baelor wraps around his brother’s back, gentle words whispering into his ear.
“Oh, sweetling. My love.” His chest aches with the force of his own tears. “We can try again.”
Maekar nods, allowing Baelor to take his weight, and they cry together amidst the ruin of their babe.
Another heat, another pregnancy.
Maekar celebrates his nameday, six-and-ten. He places his hand atop his swollen belly, five moons gone, and allows a hesitant smile.
He loses the child by the week’s end.
Maekar stands, still and silent, before the hearth. In the flames, linen and blood burn.
Even Targaryen babes were granted the gift of fire for their final journey. Their only journey.
Baelor holds back, watching his lover’s still form, disappearing from the bedchamber before the omega can notice. Maekar had told him it was a girl. From what Baelor had seen of the bundled gore, it didn’t look much like anything.
Smoke gathers across the solar. Wood and moss and dead daughters.
He comes to his mother’s rooms, and she bids him entry without another word. Word catches around the Red Keep unfairly fast.
“Find him a tonic,” Baelor begs of her, “a medicine. For we cannot survive another one.”
She watches him for a long moment before nodding, the dark of her gaze endless in its knowing. Then, she gentles. Myriah opens her arms, and Baelor falls into them, weeping.
It is two years before Maekar again catches with child.
The news hits them with force. Maekar rages, Baelor stumbles. Under their questioning, the queen, for the first time, looks helpless.
“It is not infallible,” she explains. “I am sorry for it.”
Maekar seethes at her before he flees the room. Baelor makes to accompany him when his mother grasps his shoulder.
“Leave him. He must mourn,” she tells him.
Baelor feels a tender thing in his chest spike and bleed.
“The child yet lives.” If only as a hope.
The queen’s head shakes.
“He mourns a choice lost.”
So Baelor permits his brother time, left alone with the whispers. Servants in the corridors, at work in the kitchens, the word on every person’s tongue is that Daeron’s omega son is again with child.
Not a one believes he will carry to term.
Even amongst the small council, Maekar’s pregnancy is discussed. It is a matter of the realm’s stability, whether the heir will produce an heir. There is a question of whether Maekar is even fit for it.
After all, Maekar was not the council's first choice for Baelor's bride. Nor their second. The issue of their shared blood was not even their greatest concern; it was the inherent perversion of taking a man to wife in such a way. That it was possible did not make it preferable. The difficulties of male omegas even conceiving were cited, and historic precedence within their own house did not make a compelling point in the face of religious law. It was even dressed up as Maekar being allowed the opportunity to live as a beta, to remain with sword, try and sire children on a willing lady.
They had informed Baelor that, if it was his nature as an alpha to wed an omega, would the Lady Dondarrion not suit as well?
But the Lady Dondarrion was not Maekar, and she never would be. The Lady Dondarrian was not woven in the womb as the other half of Baelor's soul.
Yet, as well as Maekar had been able to conceive, he had not been able to carry. And so the small council convened.
Wyllam Hayford posits that the prince is now old enough to better carry a child.
Ronnel Penrose is assured that, should Aerys only hasten his marriage to Aelinor, they may set aside the question of Baelor’s heir altogether.
Brynden Rivers carefully suggests that other forms of medicine be considered to flush Maekar’s womb before it becomes another grave.
They each have the gall to announce every suggestion in Baelor’s presence.
It is Lord Ambrose Butterwell he breaks under, when the man declares that Baelor should place his husband aside. That the Doctrine of Exceptionalism is antiquated, that its continual affront to the gods is what strikes each child dead in the womb.
All his life, Baelor has trained himself to be a wall immovable. He must be the hand that holds up a kingdom, a dynasty. His muddied skin adds to the weight, and each vow threatens to break him apart.
It is why Baelor weighs the outcome of every option. The intent behind every pause in a sentence, every inflection of a vowel. Every move is measured out twenty in advance.
So Baelor knows exactly what it is to stand from the table, dashing trade agreements and missives and wine to the floor, snarling curses towards his father’s Lord Hand. He does so anyway.
He curses himself for not striking the man dead.
Baelor storms from the council chambers, fire and blood in his every step.
For the truth of it is that, in a lifetime of measuring and calculating, of compromise and acquiescence, the only thing Baelor has ever allowed himself to choose is Maekar.
His father had brought Baelor and Aerys to his solar when they were little more than boys, presenting them with a list of maidens from various stormlander houses, and he bade them choose. Mayhaps Baelor would even have been able to, but for the arrival of a maester who informed the king that his youngest son had presented.
The die had been cast then. There would be no stormlander maiden for Baelor. Already had he denied himself Maekar, throwing up every excuse that nature seemed fit to swipe away.
He had stolen Maekar away that very night, and Maekar had followed him, always sweet.
Now, his husband sits and seethes while every lord with their father's ear seeks to usurp him.
Baelor spends the remainder of the week restless. His soul is panicked, made worse by the steadily quieting form of Maekar, who flees from company, hiding himself in rooms only the gods could find.
The king discusses it with Baelor but once. They sit before the fire, sipping at Arbor Red, and his father carefully sets his cup aside.
“I was eight when my twin brothers died. I confess, I do not remember their faces, nor the sound of their cries. I know that my mother was brought close to death by the birth and that, afterwards, she would spend hours weeping for her lost sons. I was confused. Babes cried; they demanded attention. They lived and grew. Not the brothers I can no longer recall. Nor your aunt Daenerys’s twin. I remember him more. He was like your Vaera: pale and silent. Peaceful. Only ever peaceful.”
Vaera. Oh, his sweet girl. Why could his father not cease talking?
Daeron brings himself back to the present, gaze firm, nearly commanding.
“Baelor, I have never buried a child. I pray every night that I never will. But it hurts to see a grandchild dead. I did not approve of your match; you know as much. But I also know Maekar has only ever listened to you. You may never share a living child, but you must share the burden of it. You cannot allow this grief to become you.”
Baelor must swallow past a lump in his throat many times before he is finally able to return to his own rooms. He knows he will find Maekar within them.
Baelor knows what is said about his brother. That he is acrid, surly, harsh in his every appointment. His manner borders on cruel, and his smiles are so rare that he is frequently called joyless. More so since their children began dying within him.
All that might be true, but Baelor knows better. Maekar is strong. In body, in soul. He has stood unshaken from Baelor’s side since he could walk. He has stood as Baelor bore every disgusted look, every biting word. Baelor is measured and found wanting, but Maekar never stopped watching him as if Baelor were the world’s one light.
He opens the door to that unfailing disciple, one who is aimlessly fiddling with a cyvasse piece.
The hair that had once fallen down his back has been cropped, just brushing his shoulders. A shadow across his jaw suggests the man is in two minds about growing it in.
Whatever way he chose to shape himself, it would make no difference to Baelor.
Baelor sits opposite Maekar, stopping himself from reaching for the omega’s hands. Lowly things, scarred and callused from hours spent proving the worth of himself. Baelor sees him now as he had then.
“I swore to you,” Baelor begins, bringing a look of shock from the depths of Maekar’s body. “From this day until the end of my days. I do not make such oaths in jest.”
“Nor I,” Maekar hushes back. He had smiled so widely on their wedding day, blushing like a maiden as they kissed before the Great Sept’s crowd. He had hiccupped and laughed under the influence of too much wine. His robes had been red and orange and yellow, and Baelor had realised how, together, Targaryen and Martell made the colour of fire.
"Nothing will change it. We will have nothing but each other, ailing upon our deathbed, and it will be enough. Just as you have always been."
My brother, my Maekar. Forged for me.
When Baelor leans forward, Maekar meets him halfway, his lips just as soft as they were the day Baelor stole him. It is unspeakably gentle, what passes between them. Soft, like the breath of a ghost.
“Whatever you wish, wherever you go, I will follow. I will love you still.”
Maekar grasps at him, fabric misshaping.
“And if my body refuses you a child? If I bar you from my cunt for the rest of our lives?”
“I will say it again: you will be enough.”
Baelor cannot pull away. He nuzzles into Maekar’s neck, pecking at the light scarring over his scent gland.
“Come to bed. Hold me.”
Maekar does not hesitate. He is nodding, then he is following, and then his arms are everywhere, and Baelor at last finds rest within them.
Three moons pass, and Maekar says nothing.
Six, and the babe starts kicking.
Baelor does not know whether to allow them hope.
Maekar sits, again heavy, and watches the fire.
“If it dies, I will join them.”
The rest of the sentence goes unsaid. I will join them all. Our sweet babes. All our sweet, dead babes.
Baelor comes to his bride. He rests his chin on Maekar’s thigh, kissing his belly, careful beyond measure with a possibility that comes wrapped in his greatest gift.
I cannot allow that. I will keep you here, even if it kills us both.
When Maekar’s labours begin, Baelor does not leave their rooms.
He sits with Maekar’s hand in his own, taking the ache of Maekar’s hold. His brother does not curse, nor shout, nor jape. He merely pants and pushes and, near the end, fixes Baelor with a pleading stare.
“Don’t let it happen again.”
If only such a thing were in his power. He would have pulled them back through the years, made them whole once more.
Maekar closes his eyes, moaning, then lets out one final bark of pain while the midwives exclaim over an encroaching head.
The wet slide of blood tells Baelor that their child is born, caught by Maester Kaeth and raised.
The skin, when he sees it, is blue.
There is a moment of silence. Seconds turn infinite. In them, Baelor feels his heart fall away, a dark cloud passing over it. He sees Maekar freeze, his lilac eyes gone wide, shaking his head past the point of exhaustion.
A fourth loss. There would never be another attempt. Neither of them could survive it.
An infant’s shrill cry causes Baelor to cringe away, just for a second. The last time he had heard the sound, it had been Maekar’s own, and he had demanded his brother from Myriah’s arms into his own.
Then Baelor hears himself laughing, feels tears running from his face, for a babe was crying. His child lived.
Maekar slumps forward, his back trembling beneath silent weeping as he shakes his head.
“It is a dream. It is only a dream.”
“No, sweetling,” Baelor cradles Maekar’s head to his chest. “It is our child.”
“A boy, my Prince,” Kaeth exclaims, drawing closer to present the child to him. “Your heir lives!”
My heir. My darling boy.
Before Kaeth can draw any closer, Maekar throws his hand out, grappling at the maester’s grey robe.
“Give me my boy.” His words are ferocious, brokering no arguments. No, Baelor is not the wall unshakable, he is the ever-moving force, an alpha, one who had to lead amongst so he was never without.
Maekar. His dearest, darling Maekar. The unmovable wall. Maekar, who took loss after loss upon his shoulders and carried on. Maekar, who takes their son into his arms and only then seems to calm.
Baelor litters his mate’s crown with kisses, as if they could ever be enough.
“Sweetheart, my dear one, oh my love. Thank you, thank you. My every dream. You are my every single dream.”
Then, because his greed is vast and near unknowable, Baelor turns his face to the greatest creation ever offered.
Baelor can hardly stand to look at him. It is like beholding the sun, condensed into the form of a creature that could fit in his cupped hands.
The boy is covered in blood and water of the womb. The white stain of birth smears across his arms and legs, all of which are reaching, kicking, grasping. Indignant, at the sudden wholeness that was the world. One outside of Maekar’s protective hold.
Wiping the babe clean, the midwives coo over the dark stain of his hair, and the sight twists something deep in his belly that Baelor cannot rightfully name.
Amidst the dark hair littering his head, a dot of silver breaks forth. A star amidst the night sky.
She watches us even now. Dear boy, you come to us already kissed.
He wonders if the boy’s sister watches them still.
“Valarr.” The word falls from his lips, coming halfway between demand and question.
It invokes their firstborn. Had the world been kinder, she might have stood over him as Baelor once had Aerys. The brave elder sister, excited for her baby brother’s cries.
Valarr. The name is its own prayer.
Grow, my dear, darling boy. Grow strong and tall and far older than your mother and your father ever will be.
Maekar does not turn towards Baelor, too taken with the squirming runt in his arms.
“A bit unimaginative, is it not?”
“Mayhaps. But it suits him even so, do you not think?”
Maekar hums, noncommittally, brushing his thumb across his son’s brow.
“We did say, once, that the child should have a name of their own.” He swirls the dark hair through his fingers, every inch of the child seemingly enrapturing him. “Father may be upset that he was not honoured.”
“If we are ever graced with another boy, he shall be named for his grandsire.”
Bitten lips are the only sign of Maekar’s conflict.
“Another?” He pauses, and Baelor ponders if it had been an error. Another promise that would only be broken. A gamble pushed too far.
After a moment, Maekar only grunts.
“When my body again finds the energy, I suppose we shall think about it.”
Possibility does not emanate through the room, but Baelor feels the warmth of it leak through the cracks.
Then, Maekar at last turns to face him.
“You put him inside me. Hold him.”
The words are an invitation that Baelor may have part of what is dearest to him.
So, Maekar relinquishes their son haltingly, and the warmth of him now lies beside Baelor’s chest.
A marvel: his son fits so easily in his arms.
Valarr reaches for him, taking Baelor’s finger in his hand. Baelor gasps, wondering if love ever struck a man dead.
“Look at you, my son. Look at the strength of your hold.” He turns, ensuring that Maekar can watch them, heavy with exhaustion though he may be. “Darling, look at our boy. Behold what you made for us.”
Maekar turns, and looks and, finally, allows his face to break into a grin.
Maekar births them seven more children that Baelor lives to witness.
Baelor adores each of them, each child carving out for themselves another place in his heart until Baelor is certain that he’ll die from how full he is. A wonderous inversion of his grandfather’s greed.
Eight perfect gifts. How had he lived more than twenty years without them?
He relishes being a father, laying kisses upon their tiny faces, marvelling at the traces of him and Maekar that he sees in them. He brings them to the small council chambers, the throne room, so unwilling is he to miss even a second of their lives.
The day Valarr first calls for his papa, Baelor lifts his boy so very high, pretending he does not press tears into the dark of his hair.
Seven more children learn the name, and the fact of it never ceases to fell him.
Baelor is the one to place each child on their first mount. He sits at their bedsides and tells them stories of past victories, ancient loves. He comforts their nightmares and allows them to ride on his back when they seek to play pretend.
It is why Aerion now hangs from his neck, shrieking.
“Look, look! I am rider of the Black Dread! Look at me, mother!”
Maekar watches them, his stern face softening in a way only Baelor can truly read.
Aerion came into the world fiercely, tearing his mother open, screaming. He came into the world his sister’s ghost, for when Baelor glanced down at him, he saw a silver-haired child that had never made a sound.
But the gods are good for all they are cruel, and their thirdborn never hesitates in making his presence known. He is a stubborn, demanding thing, a year too long kept on the breast. But Maekar had adored him from the first. What else was Baelor to say?
Aerion had still been in swaddling clothes when the Crown called its banners to war. Baelor had left three sons behind when he marched to rally Dornish spearmen and stormlander barracks to defend the city where his family slept.
Baelor had thought to see Maekar again in Maegor’s Holdfast, yet when he saw the quartered red dragon of his brother’s sigil, standing firm as Baelor crushed their bastard uncle’s army against it, he had been entirely unsurprised.
Their sons had run to them, crying in delight at their parents returned home.
Baelor reaches behind, now, grabbing at Aerion where he plays.
“And is the rider of the Black Dread ready to face the terror of the tickle monster?”
His son shrieks in delight, the tickles causing his arms to weaken.
Valarr runs with Daeron on his back, playing at Rhaenys and Meraxes, come to battle the devious Balerion.
Baelor allows himself to fall to the carpeted floor, crying out in defeat.
“How mighty are these brave conquerors of mine!”
The children jump upon him, shrieking with laughter. Baelor holds them close and kisses their soft cheeks, trying not to think that the image of their domesticity is one child short.
He thinks Vaera may have been stern. Commanding. Delighting in bringing her unruly brothers in line. Baelor would have made her his heir.
It is Daeron who now crawls upon his stomach, the expression on his sweet face far too troubled for one so young.
“No, Papa! Don’t fall down! You have to stand back up.”
Baelor ruffles the sand-stained hair of his second son’s head.
“Do not worry, Daeron. It will take more than Rhaenys to fell me.”
Daeron’s mouth curdles, seemingly unsatisfied with the answer, but he is soon distracted by Valarr trying to tackle him to the ground.
He and Valarr are so close in age. It was as if Daeron was born holding his brother’s heel. But the two were so different in all they were similar in age. Whatever was Valarr’s became, in practice, Daeron’s as well. Baelor prayed that it would not grow grief between them.
Let them grow and find in each other trust and joy. Let them be Baelors and Aerys and Rhaegels and Maekars. Knowing only a brother’s love, not his betrayal.
Before bed, Baelor makes their sons bid goodnight to their mother and the new sibling that grows within him.
Aemon arrives in the world a matter of weeks afterwards, and Valarr’s huff of disappointment is the first thing the child hears.
“I wanted a sister!”
Baelor can pretend his tears are simply for joy at another son blessed to them, and not that the first demands something that, by rights, should have already been his.
Yet, as sure as the years turn and winter yields to summer once more, Valarr is granted his wish.
When Daella is born, Baelor weeps into her hair, for it is dark brown and curling. His own inheritance given to her, worn with all the grace he could never muster. It is his second daughter, and he and Maekar watch each other over her head, yet to have solved the question of where grief goes. How exactly it is able to make room for love.
A girl who is hale and healthy. A girl who grows to be so very gentle and considerate. The lords and ladies of court sometimes mistake her for Rhaegel’s child, not Maekar’s, and it is almost amusing to consider.
Baelor puts such rumours down all the same.
From the first, she is their little lady. Delicate and polite, measured and careful. Baelor teaches her how to play cyvasse and, by the time she is one-and-ten, she can best him in every match.
“My clever girl,” Baelor kisses into her brow. She flourishes in her pride, careful as she tempers it. He would allow her pride and vanity and more still.
While Daella comes into the world careful in her demanding, her twin comes softer, and Baelor fancies to name him Matarys.
To think, his father’s council one thought Maekar barren. Yet Baelor beholds six children his mate has given him.
Maekar laughs, a rumbling noise even as he takes care to feed Matarys.
“What hope does Bittersteel have when you have fielded an army from my womb?”
Their son apparently agrees, for he lifts away from Maekar’s breast to join his mother in laughter.
Matarys is their sweetest child, making no noise of complaint, even as a babe. He simply stares up at his parents and giggles, bubbling saliva at them.
There is little change in his disposition as he grows. He remains a dutiful son who loves nothing more than seeing his mother smile.
Years pass. Baelor and Maekar add wrinkles to their faces, lines of laughter at their mouths, and crow’s marks around their eyes. Baelor’s hair streak with grey, and he begins to look decades older than Maekar. Baelor delights in kissing his “sweet young bride,” who growls and pushes at him and kisses back twice as fiercely.
It is one such exchange that their last son is conceived during.
Maekar wishes to name him Aegon. Baelor doesn’t take to name, but he owes Maekar much and more, so he nods and holds his son up to the light.
“Aegon. A kingly name indeed.” The boy’s face screws up, perhaps agreeing with Baelor, perhaps annoyed by the gleam of light. The sun reflects from his dull silver hair, casting the boy in fire. Mayhaps what he longed for was instead the cold, this summer child of theirs.
“Seven children, one for each of the gods.”
“Eight.” Maekar’s voice is unyielding. Harsh as the man himself. “We have eight children.”
Baelor winces, the joy of the moment now tainted.
“Indeed.”
A host of children who would be forever incomplete. Living as hedge knights do, having to become accustomed to a festering wound, a lost limb.
Rhae’s birth is painful, but not the pain of the body. She is a spectre of their first babe, come so many years later. Baelor and Maekar are helpless to adore her, but sometimes, the moon dances in her hair, and it is agony to watch.
In many ways, Rhae is a blade. Slight and sharp, honed to a point. When she cuts, it wounds and it saves in equal measure.
Hard though she is, Rhae and her other siblings are taken into Baelor's arms. When they are little enough, he delights in how many he can hold at once. Their cries of glee are a mirror to his own.
Baelor declares to anyone who will hear how blessed he and his mate are to be gifted so many beautiful treasures.
Maekar rolls his eyes but never argues. He has fed each child from his own breast. He tucks them into bed at night, watches over them as they sleep. He rises and sleeps for their sake. But Baelor does not miss the fact that Maekar’s love is fiercest over the ones that share their sister’s pale hair. Many mistake this for Maekar’s distaste over his Dornish blood, made visible in his children.
Baelor knows differently. He knows it is only grief.
He wonders, sometimes, if he allows Maekar too much out of guilt. It was Baelor, after all, who took his brother to wife at five-and-ten, and pupped him soon afterwards. If he had waited, if Vaera had been born later, would she have lived?
If she had lived, would Maekar have been less indulgent with Aerion, the boy who looked so much like the sister he never knew? Was indulgence born from loss why Baelor was forced to sit and watch his spoiled middle child demand a centuries-old trial?
Aerion is Maekar’s greatest pride; at the same time, he is Baelor’s greatest shame.
In his darkest moments, when he holds a trembling Aegon or makes apologies to a washerwoman’s son, Baelor closes his eyes and wonders.
It is only for a half-second. It is enough to condemn him.
Why had Vaera been stolen, and Aerion given in her place? If he had the choice, would Baelor exchange children?
(Yes. He is terrified that he wouldn’t hesitate.)
Baelor thinks of Vaera when he requests from Valarr his armour. Firstborn daughter, firstborn son. Valarr and his bride, now living out his sister’s fate.
Their twinned names, his pride and his joy.
The obsidian plates fit, but not well. When he rides onto the field, Aerion watches his father and despises him. (Baelor wants to joke with his boy. Here again comes the Black Dread. Now vanquish him. Oh, how Aerion used to laugh. How great the warmth of the sound was.)
Maekar watches, and his heart breaks.
He should know, Baelor only loves him the fiercer for it. That Maekar will defend their babes as Baelor defends the realm. It is the argument they have long struck.
As his skull echoes with the force of Maekar’s blow, Baelor knows nothing but love for him. Love for them all. Even Aerion, for all his many faults, for he made Maekar smile. Bold Aerion, who had once been so proud to show Baelor his latest catch.
With his last breath, Baelor feels Ser Duncan catch his body. This sworn sword that might have been.
As a man who was made richer by love, Baelor cannot regret any of it, even though he selfishly wishes for just a few years more. Years enough to see Aegon and Rhae grow, to see Valarr a father of his own. Years to find forgiveness in Aerion, redemption for his bright and cruel son.
He wants years to feel the ache of age in his bones, for his hair to at last betray his Valyrian blood. To sleep and wake beside Maekar, breathing his last in their shared bed.
Those years are denied him, but as he dies, Baelor lives through them all the same.
The pain begins to abate. Bitterness and regret unravel.
Baelor wishes only to see Maekar’s beautiful, pox-kissed face but one final time. He knows that it will never be enough.
As Baelor’s body begins its fade, he feels only comfort, for she is before him once more. Vaera. He sees her features clear in death as he had never been able to in life, and he wonders at her. She has grown into a toddler, giggling and demanding stories from her sire about him and her mother both. Of the life she was denied.
Baelor does not linger long enough in this life for the smile to reach his lips, but he does not mind. His body rises hale and whole, joy sowing tears in his eyes, and Baelor once more lifts his eldest into his arms.