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His father did not receive them in the throne room. Rather, he met their party as they came into the Red Keep from one of the dusty back halls that led towards the stables. Maekar did not notice him at first, not until everyone bowed low or dropped to a knee in the presence of the King.
But he only had eyes for Prince Valarr, who received his embrace in a sort of daze, swaying on his feet as King Daeron’s arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. Maekar was close enough that he could hear the words that he whispered into his grandson’s hair. “My boy. How did we get here?”
Valarr waited until the rest of their retinue passed by, heads down in quiet respect, before he buckled in Daeron’s arms and clutched tight at the back of his coat. “He’s gone, Grandfather,” came his strangled voice, “He’s just gone.”
Maekar walked on as well to give them their privacy. He could not hear the grief, not from his own father. And not again from Valarr, who had hidden himself away from everyone on the long journey home, including his wife, and would only emerge red-eyed and near catatonic when someone had the sense to remember they hadn’t seen him in a while.
Further down the hall Maekar came upon his mother, hurrying her way in the direction of Daeron and Valarr. She stopped as he approached and her hands came immediately for his face. “Oh, Maekar.” She was crying. Maekar had never seen her cry. His mother was stalwart and strong and did not let anything phase her. And she was sobbing in his arms, shaking as he held her up under the dim light of the torches in the hall. “Is he really?” she kept asking, “Is he?”
Her hair was still dark, just starting to turn silver at the edges, and she was mourning her first-born. Maekar felt a growing shame, ever-present, and he could do nothing but nod.
“Your father-” she started through her tears, “He will need help, Maekar, he cannot do this alone.” Her palms settled on his shoulders. She looked up at him, because she had to, as he had grown taller than her sometime in his early years and had just never stopped growing. “He cannot even think, he is so overcome. I do not know- he would not even tell me the specifics, why they haven’t killed the fool that did this. I thought that you might. You would not have let a man go, had he killed your brother?”
She did not know it had been him. Her eyes, dark and tear-ladened, waited for him to confirm that he had extracted the family’s revenge. It was what she expected of him. Maekar could not fathom that he was once again disappointing his mother. He’d thought that feeling would stop once he became an adult. But here, in a dusty hallway in the castle he and Baelor had grown up in, he had to give her the horrid news. And of course this came at the hands of his father, too gentle to do the dark deed himself. “It was my blow in the trial. I struck the fatal one.”
It was a position he never wanted to be in, his mother’s. To know one son had killed another. He’d come too close to this, and it was this knowledge that kept him on his feet while Myriah’s face crumpled. He had to see her through this horrible revelation. “No,” she said quickly, “No, you would do no such thing. You would not kill your brother.”
Inadequacy was not enough of a word to describe what he felt as he stared down at her. “It was an accident.” He wanted to give his apologies as well, but he did not know how. She had never liked an empty platitude. And that was what a sorry was in the face of this tragedy. A sorry would not bring Baelor back, would not heal the wound that he could see tear its way through his mother’s heart.
She had always been quick to temper. Her tears fled her, and in their place came a shriek. “No! Not this family!” Myriah turned this way and that, looking perhaps for some sort of proof that this could not be. When she found no witnesses to their conversation she turned back to Maekar.
He tilted his chin up, prepared to take whatever she wanted to give in her anger. Someone should be angry with him, he’d thought, since the day they’d left Ashford Castle.
But her anger dissolved just as quickly as it came. She buried her face within her hands, and a harsh sob tore its way out of her throat. “What did you do?” Myriah cried, “What did you and your horrible spawn do?”
It was too much for him. He could not bear her weeping rather than her fury, even though he knew it was his duty as a son to comfort his mother. But Maekar was no good son. He turned and fled in a brisk walk and broke out into the halls of the great Red Keep. In the castle, he found Matarys staring up at him in shock. His blue eyes were wide and wet with tears as he asked after him, stepping towards him, and Maekar had no choice but to continue his flight from the gathered family.
He did not know where he was going until he found himself walking across the castle, into the Tower of the Hand. The climb up to the rooms burned his chest and legs. His wounds from the tourney persisted. Each morning he awoke in pain, and it was such pain that reminded him that his brother was dead by his hand.
Baelor’s chambers were undisturbed. Clean. Everything within had a proper place. There was only one book askew on the desk within his solar, a great big record of fishing licenses, and Maekar felt sick as he thought of sitting at the desk and rummaging through the unfinished letters that occupied it. He looked for Baelor within the rooms and found little trace of him. There were only the clothes, hung tidily by the servants, and the various clasps and rings scattered about that held a true trace of his brother.
Maekar wondered who would take up residence there next and banished the thought as quickly as it came. He sat on the edge of the bed. His shoulders bowed. When Maekar had been a very young boy and hadn’t yet been allowed to follow Baelor into the training yard, he had broken into his brother’s room and thrown fits that the bastards got to spend time with his big brother while he was still too small to join him.
Baelor would always come back after and shake him awake from the nap he usually ended up taking there. He was too old now to remember such days clearly, but he swore he could still hear his brother’s voice, soft and musical, as he called his name.
There would be no Baelor now. Nor ever again. Maekar sat there and listened to the screech of the gulls that flew by the tower, breathing in the fresh air that came up this high over the city. When the door creaked open much later, he knew it was not his brother coming to find him. The footsteps were slow and shuffling. The bed dipped next to him, and a hand landed on his shoulder. “My son,” came the weathered voice of his father.
When Maekar turned to see him up close, he was shocked at the lines etched into his father’s face. Daeron had been aging slowly, it seemed to him, for he could still recall how his father had looked when he’d been young. Now, his hair was not the silver-gold of youth, but rather pure white. Sorrow, Maekar realized, had bled the energy right out of him. He even moved slowly, leaning back to get a good look at his son.
“Father, I…” He did not know what he could say. He also did not know how much Valarr had revealed in his letters, for Maekar had been too much of a coward to write the words down himself. “I did not mean to,” he finally settled on, and it felt so wrong. It felt as if he was apologizing for breaking his brother’s nose, not ending his life.
“I know,” Daeron said, slow in his words as well. “I did not imagine you meant for what happened to happen.” He sighed, deeply, and grabbed for one of Maekar’s hands. It was a good thing, he thought, that his father would still want to touch him. “But our actions, Maekar, have a way of inviting consequences far beyond what we could have ever envisioned.”
That was a mild way of putting it. He nodded. He pulled his hand away, for he was far too old to need such assurance from his father. King Daeron’s hand fell limply on the bed. “I will return to Summerhall,” he promised, finding the strength to look him in the eye, “to see Aerion off. I’m sending him to Lys.”
Daeron’s eyes were as violet as his. Maekar could swear that he knew his as he knew his own. He could see that beyond the grief, there was a deep well of disappointment. For him or for Aerion, he could not tell. Maekar wanted to bow his head. To grovel. To let his father know that it had not all been Aerion’s fault, truly. The hedge knight, he wanted to say, and Baelor’s own foolish decision to fight for him. To fight in his son’s armor, which he would have known would not protect him. Even Valarr, who had refused to take his father’s place when the entire foolish plot had been revealed to him. Any one of them could have prevented this.
Maekar could have not swung his mace straight into his brother’s skull.
“I need you here,” Daeron said then. And how many times had he wished his father would say those words to him? Here it was, in The Tower of the Hand no less. Bile crept up his throat. “Your brothers still have no taste for these things. And Valarr…”
“Is a child, still,” Maekar finished for him, thinking of the tear-streaked face he’d seen on his nephew so often as of late.
“Needs you too, is what I was going to say.” Daeron’s gaze pierced him once more. There would be no criticizing the young prince, then. His coddling went far beyond what Maekar could consider proper, but what could he say, after killing the boy’s father? “Valarr has performed his duties as heir exceptionally well. He now has a much more difficult task laid ahead of him. Baelor would have wished for you to be at his side.”
This was not about what his father wanted, then. It was about Baelor. It was all always about Baelor, and Maekar could not even be mad about it because he would like to honor his brother’s wishes as well.
Sat on the edge of the bed, with his shoulders turned down, Daeron looked so much more like a man than a king. Was this the man that Baelor had seen so much more of?
“I will stay,” Maekar agreed, if only to ease some of the burden from his father’s shoulders. It was the least he could do, after killing his son.
Daeron turned his head, tilting it in a way that Baelor had always copied. “Thank you, my son.” His gentleness never left him. Not even as he looked upon his firstborn’s murderer.
“I am sorry,” he added, finding it hard to force the words from his throat. But it was true. He did not know why it was so hard to say. He only knew that he was terribly sorry. So sorry that it burned within him.
A small nod came from his father. It was he that Maekar owed his apologies to more than anyone else. He could not fathom that he had caused such pain to someone he loved.
“My father,” Daeron began, with a sigh that almost sounded wistful, “Was not an easy man to please.” Maekar knew this to be an understatement. He felt all the worse, for now Daeron had been disappointed by a father and a son. But he continued, “Often in my youth I would dream of what it must be like to have a kind father. One who loved me, who cared for me. I would pray to the gods to give me such a father, and they willed that it should not be. Instead, they gave me four sons to love. I know now that I am the better for it. These years, these short years since I married your mother, have brought me happiness beyond belief. It is how I still stand now, for your brother exists just in my memory, and he is happy there as well.”
None of this did Maekar any good. He could not care whether Baelor lived within his thoughts. He was not here anymore. He was not alive to scold Maekar for being cold to their father. But he truly could not cause Daeron any more harm. His head dipped in a small nod, hoping it would convey something such as agreement to him, and Daeron sighed back. He returned his hand to Maekar’s shoulder so that he might stand up, hunched and slow. Before he stepped away, he gave it a small squeeze and told him that his mother would need more time.
Maekar watched him shuffle out the door while he wondered if all of this would have been easier, had he hated Baelor. He did not think so.
Two quiet weeks after their conversation, Maekar’s father fell ill. It was a growing sickness, he was told, that had been spreading throughout the realm. Maekar was aware of it in the way he was aware of anything outside of his own head – dimly and without much curiosity. He was still fuming that Daeron’s small council had continued with their regular meetings, as if Baelor hadn’t just died.
The King had named Valarr as his Hand. No one was particularly happy with it, but neither did anyone care enough to get angry. The boy had spent enough time within the council meetings to know what was expected of him. It was Maekar that was the outsider – he did not know why he was there, truly, but his father had asked for his presence and Maekar did not refuse him.
It was this small reconciliation between them that kept him from fleeing King’s Landing when he walked into the small council one morning and Valarr informed him, with haunted eyes, that King Daeron had fallen ill. His nephew sat in his own usual spot and looked far too alone, with only he and Elaena to join him at the table. He looked nothing like Baelor would have in the face of such great calamity. He only looked scared and pained, though Maekar considered that he knew this only because he had learned to read the boy as well as he read his brother.
The sickness spread throughout the rest of the castle in one fell swoop after that. Maekar buried himself in letters. He instructed the castellan at Summerhall to keep the gates closed, and was pleased to hear there had been no visitors since his son Daeron’s lonely return. Daeron wrote him his own letter too, mentioning only that Summerhall saw no sickness, and that his brother Aegon had written to let him know that he and his knight were in Dorne. Aerion would not be touched by it either, all the way in Lys. Maekar did not lose himself to the irony that his children were all safer away from him.
The King’s condition worsened day by day. As the sickness took man after man within hours, the news that King Daeron still had not succumbed seemed to keep everyone wary. Maekar did not visit his father. He’d already seen Baelor, dented and bloodied and devoid of life. He could not look upon his father in such a way. He knew it made him a coward, but who was left to reprimand him of such a thing?
Certainly not his brothers, who made themselves just as scarce. His mother was locked away with his father and reportedly refused to leave his side. And Maekar would be damned if he let his meddling aunt and uncle seek him out.
It was Valarr who came to him, eventually, though he had nothing to say on Maekar’s absence at his father’s bedside. Baelor’s little prince was unusually rumpled when he appeared at his door with his arms overtaken by various books. The guard who let him in only shrugged at Maekar when he glared at him for the disturbance of his evening routine of looking sullenly out the window.
Valarr marched in and deposited the books on a desk, uncaring of what he knocked over. It was the most animated Maekar had seen him in weeks. He plucked one out of his pile and opened it, then stole Maekar’s quill as he began to write notes in the margins.
“My prince?” Maekar said, when it was clear Valarr had no intention of speaking at first. He approached slowly, looking down as the candles flickered around them. Beneath Valarr’s hands was a tome that recorded the stores of grain. “What is this?”
“Reports are coming in that there have already been near thousands of deaths across the realm, Uncle.” He was aware of this. But he waited for Valarr to continue. “That means there will be less hands to tend the crops. Even now, the planting is suffering.”
The planting? Maekar thought there was a much more pressing problem, than the planting and harvesting of fucking wheat. “Then the planting will have to suffer. The crown will buy more grain if needs be.”
“But our excess gold is being spent.” He meant on the reinforced guard, on the bullshit cures that flooded the city in a poor attempt to stymie the spread of sickness, and on food. Food that rotted away with no one to eat it.
“Then we will borrow more gold.”
Valarr turned to him then and raised his brow in a clear imitation of Baelor, who had also disliked the notion of raising debt to fix an immediate problem. “Father will have my head if we choose a poor investment over the wise one,” he stated simply, before he turned back to the book.
“We are still not through with the sickness,” Maekar reminded his nephew.
Valarr shrugged one shoulder up. “It will take what it will take.” He sounded so much like his father in that moment, and looked much like him, all focused on his duties, that Maekar wanted to reach out and pull him up to see if he would look just like Baelor too. “We are playing a numbers game, Uncle. We must turn our excess gold towards the fields – bring in willing hands from across The Narrow Sea, or wherever we can find workers – and begin the planting at once.” His writing did not cease. In fact, it looked somewhat frantic. “And the exports must be stopped. The food the Seven Kingdoms produces must stay within the Seven Kingdoms, to be circulated along with our gold.”
Exportations and gold and workers for the planting all washed over Maekar in a dreary wave. He did not think that these were their most pressing problems. Not when Brynden was making moves to advance his position in court, not when his own mother still refused to speak to him, not with the King on his deathbed.
But Valarr kept talking. “-price drops, then the supply will dwindle even further. Don’t you see, Uncle? We are on the precipice of an even greater disaster.” The boy turned towards him, and there in the flickering light of the candles did he finally notice the red flush that had overtaken him. Valarr had been unnaturally pale the past few weeks. Red was new. Red was bad. Red meant fever. Horrified, he put a hand to his nephew’s forehead and found it flaming.
Valarr did not seem to care that he was being touched. His eyes weren’t quite focused where they looked up at Maekar. Before he could comment on the fever, Valarr pushed a hand into his chest and compelled him back. Then he turned, staggering, and fell into a fit of coughing. It overtook his body. He seemed unable to stop it as he bent and coughed, shoulders shaking. Maekar heard a wet slap, and saw blood splatter onto the desk Valarr was bent over. It had come from his mouth.
“No.” He surged into Valarr’s side, grabbing him before he could collapse onto the floor. His nephew groaned and wiped at his mouth, where blood had trickled down his lip. “Gods, no.” He drew one of Valarr’s arms around his shoulders, ignoring his weak protests as he pulled the boy out into the hall. “What were you thinking?” he snapped, not even caring if Valarr responded or not. “You should be in bed, should have been as soon as you knew you were ill.”
Valarr’s feet weren’t quite steady. He stumbled a few times as they walked, but Maekar dragged him on. “It won’t matter.”
“Don’t say that, boy.”
“It won’t. Daeron said I’m to die.”
Daeron? He felt hysterical. “Daeron has yet to learn that we all die, whether it’s dreamed of or not.”
“He said it as a mercy. This pain will end…” Valarr trailed off. His head sagged forward, and Maekar jostled him until he woke back up. “…Hm? Uncle, the gold. The value will go down, there will be no circulating, if there’s no one buying or selling.”
The boy was talking nonsense already. Maekar grit his teeth and flung the door to Valarr’s chambers open with a bang. There was only one servant in the corner, laying out clothes that his nephew would never have the chance to wear. “Go fetch a maester,” Maekar snapped.
“M’lord?” The servant stood there dumbly as she watched the heir get dragged through his solar and thrown onto his bed. “It’s only- all the ones that aren’t ill are in service.”
“Unless they’re all at the bedside of the fucking King, I don’t care. Bring one now!” It occurred to him that they very well could all be at his father’s bedside. But it would not matter soon enough. “And send guards too, no one is to enter this room.”
The servant finally rushed out and Maekar focused on keeping Valarr down. For some reason he was fighting him hard to get back up, even as he began to shake with another coughing fit. “No. No, Uncle, let me up.” Valarr’s hands pushed at him, then grabbed his arms. “Don’t let me- I want to die like him, on my feet. Please. Please, Uncle.” He hardly got the words out around the bloody phlegm he coughed out. His lips went bright red, and specks of blood fell down his chin.
It was one small mercy that Baelor and Jena did not have to witness such a thing.
Maekar pushed him back down by the shoulders, grumbling to himself and Valarr in turn that he must not move so much. The clinking of arms let him know that the guards had arrived just outside the door, and with them came Lady Kiera.
She rushed in on her own. “Valarr!” Her eyes were wide and frantic, but she came closer without fear. She took up a spot just next to Maekar and put her own hands on her husband’s chest to keep him down. “No, you must not fight,” she said softly, “Rest, Valarr. I need you to rest.”
Maekar figured that her presence would be better for his nephew than his own. He stepped back, and just as he let go of Valarr a voice came from the doorway. “Brother?” It was high and strained, and when Maekar turned around he found Matarys stepping into the room.
“Keep him out,” Maekar ordered swiftly. Blessedly, the guards heard his words and stopped the boy from coming closer. But Matarys immediately began to struggle against their hold, kicking even as he was lifted off of his feet and moved back by force. Maekar cursed and left Valarr to his wife, hurrying out so that the door might be shut behind him.
Matarys gave one last rush towards it, but the door did not budge as his palms landed on the wood. “No!” he cried out, landing a blow that rattled the wooden frame, “No, you cannot keep me out! I command you to open the door, I command it!”
Before he could hurt himself, or disturb Valarr further, Maekar grabbed the boy and pulled him away. Matarys fought against him even as he was dragged down the hall, but he was still just a boy, and Maekar a man. It was he that Matarys then turned his fury towards.
“You will keep me from him?” he demanded, and already his nephew’s eyes were brimming with tears. “You?”
They had told Matarys, then, what he had done. It was plain in the twist on his face and his eyes blazing. Still, Maekar tried to calm him. “It is not safe, should the sickness pass to you-”
“So you’ll have me left here alone?” His voice cracked on that last word. It was then that the tears began in earnest. Matarys shook in his arms and pushed against his chest. When Maekar did not let him go, he began to beat a fist against him. “I want my brother,” he spat, “I would never kill my brother. I want him here, I want him alive.”
Maekar took the beating without so much as a flinch, despite his still bruised body. While Matarys had grown in height the past few years, he had always been Maekar’s gentle nephew, and that continued even now, even as his fists rained blows down upon him.
Eventually the struggling ceased. His hands stopped their beating and instead fisted hard in Maekar’s shirt. Carefully, Maekar loosened his grip on the boy’s arms. Matarys shifted then, and his feet pushed off as if he meant to run back down the hall, but Maekar caught him once more.
“No! No, let me go! I want to see him, I need- Valarr!” Matarys began to call for his brother then, projecting his voice as loud as could be down the hall, as if he expected Valarr to come out the door and find him. “Valarr!”
Maekar had to lift him off of his feet and begin to drag him away. “You will upset him,” he said, gruff in his delivery because he could not trust himself to be anything else. He knew what his nephew must be feeling. He knew he would do the same, should someone tell him that Baelor was just beyond a door and he had one more chance to see him.
He deposited Matarys within his own chambers, though there was only one guard to spare to keep him there. But they could not risk Matarys falling ill as well. Maekar could not risk it. He did not think his mother would be able to handle it, should both of Baelor’s boys join him in death. Where would they be then, with no reminder of his brother?
The castle fell into a solemn silence around him. Even the few servants that were well enough to meander around stayed quiet. The small council would not convene on the morrow, Maekar was told by a messenger, due to the fact that that nearly every member was dead or dying.
He returned to his own chambers. The books Valarr had brought with him were still strewn about on the desk, as was the blood he’d coughed up. Maekar turned away from it all and took up a seat next to the fire. It was a wonder enough that they still had enough servants to keep their fires lit. He thought of what Valarr had said, the thousands already dead. Had Daeron dreamed of them all? Not likely.
Maekar fell asleep in his chair by the fire. He awoke in the morning with a start at the loud bang of his door being opened and slammed against the wall. The fire had gone out. His mouth felt stuffed full of cotton. His eyes blinked blearily in the grey morning light as he beheld the sight of his brother Aerys in the doorway.
Aerys always had a thoughtful face. Today, it looked grim. His pale skin was particularly grey, and his eyes bored straight into Maekar’s.
“Valarr?” he asked, wincing as he sat up and his neck protested.
“He lives. Lady Kiera’s tended to him through the night.”
In the silence that followed, Maekar did not know how to ask what his brother was there for then. They had not spoken beyond a regular greeting since their party had returned to King’s Landing. In fact, he hadn’t seen much of Aerys at all. That was not unusual regularly, but Maekar felt that everything was rather irregular at the moment.
Before the quiet stretched further, Aerys spoke again, “Prince Matarys is dead.”
The room smelled of sick and incense. As he stepped inside, he caught sight of Kiera knelt next to the bed. Her sleeves had been pushed up to the elbows, and her usual styled hair was pulled back and messy. She glanced up at the sound of the door. Whether she was surprised to see him or not, it didn’t show. Her eyes were set atop dark circles under them. Her mouth was turned down into a frown, and it was all for Valarr, who stayed motionless, wheezing, as he slept.
“He does not know my face,” she said, in a voice that trembled. “He asks after his father.”
Maekar closed his eyes. He sucked in a breath through his teeth, then tilted his head towards the hallway. “Come, my lady.”
Kiera hesitated, but on her second look towards Maekar she must have seen something that convinced her to get to her feet, for she rose slowly. She was dressed light, garbed in the same mourning black as the rest of them. It would likely not leave for some time.
They stepped out into the hall. There were no servants about, save for the one girl that followed Lady Kiera. She stepped away as Maekar’s glare turned towards her. Not even a white cloak stood outside the door, for all but one of them had fallen ill, and the fortunate Ser Roland stood outside the King’s door.
Lady Kiera looked worse in the light. She trembled fiercely, and Maekar remembered something his brother had mentioned about her staying up the night to press water into Prince Valarr’s mouth.
He felt something of a monster as he heaped more bad news upon her. “The sickness,” he said lowly, “came upon Prince Matarys in the night. It took him in the early hours this morning.”
Kiera did not understand at first, but when the meaning set in she brought a hand to her mouth. “No,” was her first word, and she looked suddenly between the closed door and Maekar. “No. He will not survive it.”
Maekar could not find any words to say to that, so he stayed silent as she began to weep. Her maid stepped in then, eyes low as she put her hands on Kiera’s shoulders. “My lady?”
“I should-” Kiera looked again towards the door and began to cry harder.
“Take Lady Kiera back to her rooms,” Maekar said, unable to stand it any longer. When she tried to protest, he merely shook his head. “I will tell him. It is my burden.”
“I should be with him,” Kiera said to her maid as the girl began to lead her away. Maekar heard the maid’s quiet reply, that there was nothing she could do, for the prince didn’t even know where he was anymore.
Maekar thought that he should let her do this. Then he thought of what he owed to Baelor, after caving his skull in and leaving the realm with no leader in such a dark time. That turned his feet towards the door and brought him back inside.
Maekar chose to occupy the space Kiera had vacated. He knelt despite the screaming protests in his knees and took in the sight of his nephew up close. Whether Valarr could tell that he was there or not, he did not know.
Valarr’s throat worked suddenly, swallowing fiercely as his shoulders pressed into the bed and his eyes blinked open. They were dulled. Lifeless. Unseeing, just as Baelor’s had been in death.
Maekar wanted to stand and leave. He could not do this. He should not. It was not his duty, not really. He should pass it to his brothers. His brothers, who had loved Baelor but had not been his equal. Had not fought at his side in battle and had not spent years in the training yard with him or had not hunted at his side or spent every second of their days chasing after him in their youth, scrounging for a scrap of affection and being blessed by Baelor in his willingness to give it out. His brothers who had not killed Baelor. At once, Maekar wished the sickness had taken hold of him. It would be easier than this.
“Valarr,” he said, voice steady despite his turmoil.
The boy turned his head towards the sound. His lips were caked in dried blood, too much for Kiera to have wiped away. “Father?” was the only word he spoke, blinking heavily at Maekar’s face.
“No, Valarr, it is me. It is your uncle.” He had three of those. “Maekar.”
Valarr did not try to speak again. He only stared, then let his eyes close once more. Maekar put his hand to his shoulder and shook him. “No, stay awake. I must speak to you.”
After a few seconds, Valarr opened his eyes again and he let out a groan at being jostled. It quickly turned into a harsh cough, and Maekar could do nothing but watch as he struggled to bring up more blood past his lips.
Curse the Seven, Maekar thought, that he should be so long in the dying. He had not seen his father since he’d fallen ill either, but he could not make sense of the fact that he had suffered through this hell for nearly a week. He grabbed at the cloth next to the bowl of water on the table nearby and did his best to press it to Valarr’s bloody lips. As soon as the water slipped into his mouth, Valarr tried to turn his head from it, as though it hurt him to take in.
Let the boy be done with this misery, a voice in his head that sounded like Baelor told him, let him know peace and dignity once more. It will only come in death.
Maekar hung his head. His hands found one of Valarr’s, and he took his knuckles to his forehead. His hand was warm between his own palms. Feverish, and too warm. It reminded him of how babies ran hot. His own children had all possessed too much warmth for Maekar to think was comfortable. He could remember holding an infant Valarr, too, and being shocked at how warm he’d been when a tiny hand had grasped tight at one of his fingers. It had been the first time he’d ever held a babe.
Now, he would hold his nephew for the last time. The thought seized him. He hadn’t even given his goodbye to Matarys.
Who would he look to when he wanted to see Baelor now? He could not hope to find him in a mirror glass. Their brothers held him in their own way, but not as Baelor’s children did. No one else possessed the soft voice, the gentle tilt of words that Baelor had imparted onto his eldest son. Or the cheeky smile that Matarys got from his father. “Matarys,” he said softly, thinking only of the boy he’d wrestled away from that very room.
Valarr’s head turned at the sound. It looked painful to move. The muscles in his neck strained. It took Maekar staring at him to understand that he was trying to move. Or speak. He leaned closer, tilting his ear towards Valarr’s lips. Slowly, the words came to him. “Where is my brother?” It was strained and cracked, but it was a moment of lucidity, likely brought on by the name.
Maekar pulled back and looked down at his nephew. Baelor’s eyes stared back at him.
He had meant to tell Valarr of his brother’s death. But it had always been hard to turn his harshest actions true, when it came to the little prince. “Your brother has been sent to Dragonstone, to escape the sickness.”
In his hands, Valarr’s own relaxed, having gone taught at the mention of his brother.
“Good,” he breathed, his head falling to the side once more. “Father would…” Whether he meant to say more, Maekar couldn’t tell. He did not bother to ask him.
They fell into what would have once been considered a companionable silence between the two of them. Had Baelor been alive, had Valarr not been dying, had he not just lied to him about his brother being alive, Maekar thought he might have liked to spend an afternoon with his nephew in such silence, with the bright light of the spring flooding the halls of his once-home as it did now.
They had enjoyed their silence together, a few times, over the course of Valarr’s short life. Maekar thought of a small boy asleep on his chest, sitting and reading a book in his lap, or idly leaning against his side in the training yard, exhausted after his father put him through a full day of sparring. He thought of Baelor, looking particularly worn down after a long day of readying for war, and the way his exhaustion had disappeared as soon as he’d taken his son into his arms.
His gaze found Valarr once more. Shivering, bloodied, Valarr. “Valarr,” he said, using his given name for once. “I should say goodbye.” He did not deserve it. The comfort of a goodbye. But he wanted it all the same.
Valarr’s chest rose and fell in short intervals. The breathing pained him. But his head dipped in what had to be a nod. His cracked lips moved and moved until the words finally came out. “Until I see you next.”
The words ripped the air from his lungs. Baelor used to say that, every time they parted. He’d passed this down to Valarr as well. “Yes,” Maekar said, when he regained his voice. “You will see him,” he promised his nephew, “wherever it is you are to go, you will see him again.”
He had to. That had to be the point of all of this. Baelor, his sons, and their father. They all deserved to be together in a way that he did not deserve to join them for his own follies. Maekar believed in his brother, and he was surer than anything that Baelor would find some way to be with his sons once more.
While Maekar knelt and his knees went numb, Valarr took his last struggling breaths. He could not tell whether the boy knew he was dying or not, but he figured when it happened as slow as this, a person could have an idea.
He thought of the very first time he’d taken up a vigil at Valarr’s bedside. The little boy had taken a tumble into the cold bay behind the Red Keep. His greatest fear that first night, after Valarr had been settled in bed with a cough that scared every adult in the castle, was that Valarr would simply fade away. That he would have been powerless in the face of sickness, and when Baelor returned Maekar would have had to present him with a dead son. But Valarr had survived that night and many more after it. There would be no Baelor returning now. There would be no survival either.
Valarr kept his eyes open until the end. Eventually they settled on some distant place beyond his shoulder. His hand squeezed at Maekar’s at some point, before the strength left him completely. There, in the Red Keep, Maekar watched over his nephew until there was nothing left of him but an empty body. His eyes never closed. Not until after he was gone, and Maekar had to force himself to move, to stand on aching legs. He leaned on the bed for support and reached out, wanting to shut Valarr’s eyes. He couldn’t help himself from taking one last look. Those eyes had surprised him, once or twice, in their ability to look just like Baelor’s. He wished he didn’t have to let his brother go. But he knew he must. He must give Baelor’s boy the dignity he deserved. Maekar had it in him to care for Valarr, he knew. He cared deeply. So much so that it hurt him to think about. He’d never thought he would love someone who took so much of Baelor away from him, but it wasn’t until Baelor had died that he’d come to understand that Valarr and his brother had been gracious reminders of the brother he’d lost.
And now they’d gone. He’d failed to keep them safe. He’d once promised Baelor he would defend them with his own life, if needs be, and they had slipped away without resistance. They were better off with Baelor.
Aerys was in a corner, tucked away amongst towers of books. It was a spot he’d been in a few times in their youth, when Maekar was tasked with finding where his brother had gotten up to. The septas had often lost him because he was so quiet, and he knew how to build stacks of books around himself to keep out of sight.
The books were not tall enough to hide him anymore. His silver head loomed over one, bent down towards whatever words were on the page.
“Aerys,” Maekar called. His brother did not stir. “Aerys,” he tried again, louder as he took two quick steps closer.
Aerys glanced up before he could collide with the stacks of books and scowled. “Don’t knock anything over.”
It was ridiculous of him to worry about. Baelor’s heirs were dead and the King was dying. Who cared for a few books? But Aerys extracted himself slowly from between the stacks and came out to meet Maekar.
“It’s happened, then?” was all he asked.
“Valarr’s gone.” The King still lived. Not for long, was the estimate.
“Fuck,” came Aerys’s low, airy whisper.
Maekar had to agree. He did not know what to feel other than the looming sense of dread that had taken up habitation within his chest ever since he heard Egg’s voice crying for help, saying something had happened to Uncle Baelor.
His jaw clenched. His throat tightened. His own little nephews were gone. It felt wrong to have to say it. “Brother,” he tried, hoping that Aerys would know what to say to fix this. Baelor had always known.
“Find Brynden,” Aerys said, and Maekar knew right then that he would not know how to fix this.
He left Aerys to his books with no intention of finding Lord Bloodraven. His feet took him toward his mother and father’s chambers. Surely, they would need to know. There were no servants attending the first few rooms in the apartments. He was alone as he dragged his feet in the direction of his father’s bedchamber. Outside the door there, however, he was surprised by the sight of his brother Rhaegel.
He sat on a stone bench. His fingers curled tight in his hair, not pulling on it but just holding on. Maekar worried about him until Rhaegel looked up at the sound of his footsteps and let out a deep sigh, hands dropping to his lap.
“Have you heard?” Maekar hedged.
Rhaegel nodded. He only pushed himself to his feet when Maekar approached, and his eyes were on the door to the King’s bedchambers, where Maekar knew his father was dying and his mother was watching over him. “She should know,” he finally said. “He should know.”
It was too much. How was he to tell their parents that not only had Baelor been lost, but his sons too? Maekar stared at the door, willing it open in that moment with his father hale and healthy on the other side, talking of some great adventure Baelor had gotten up to.
“Should Aerys-?” he tried to suggest, thinking that his older brother was the heir now, but Rhaegel shook his head.
“I will,” he said simply.
Maekar frowned. “You do not have to.”
Rhaegel silenced him with a raised hand. “I am whole right now, brother. I know what I say.”
They hardly spoke of it aloud, Rhaegel’s afflictions, and Maekar was forced to swallow his words and agree with his assessment, for he wanted to be the one that had to walk in that room even less.
“Your children?” Maekar asked, switching the topic as indelicately as always.
“Healthy,” Rhaegel answered easily, “thank the Gods. Though it seems sacrilege, after…” he trailed off, looking down the hall, as if waiting for someone to come around the corner. He cleared his throat and shook his head. “The maesters say grief can weaken the body. I would wonder why all of us would not be taken then, but- the princes. The shock of it all must have done them in.”
Rhaegel spent enough time with maesters to know more of what they said than anyone he knew, save for Aemon now. It only tore at his heart more. Had he damned his nephews as well with that fatal blow?
In the middle of his musings, a soft hand landed on his cheek. Rhaegel’s fingers brushed lightly over his hair. The gesture threw him off guard.
“We must be vigilant now, Maekar. For our children, for our mother, for Aerys, each other. We each are not alone in our grief. It is foolish to try to chase it down a path we can never return from, when there are still many more laid out for us.”
It was something such that Baelor would do. Would say. Baelor had always been so gentle with Rhaegel, more understanding of his situation than any other brother would have been. Could it be possible that he had imparted his own wisdom on Rhaegel?
His brother left him then to deliver the terrible news to their mother, and Maekar did not stay long enough to hear her cries of grief. He did not think he could add any more to his memories.
Rhaegel was not at the funeral, for he’d fallen into another fit soon after King Daeron drew his last, shuddering breath. Maekar had not said a final goodbye to his father. He considered the last time they’d parted, long before the horrid Ashford Tourney, when their family had not been doomed so, to be their final goodbye.
The attendance at the funeral was sparse. Only the paltry gathering of the family at the Red Keep, Lord Bloodraven, and the surviving Kingsguard were there as mourners. It wasn’t until after the bodies had been burned – all three of them at once, with the indignity of a funeral pyre instead of dragon fire – that Maekar thought that there might be some blessing in being spared the full spectacle of a royal funeral. There were no mourners to offer empty platitudes and no lords with their hands out begging for scraps to kick away. There was only silence.
He walked away from the ashes. Those weren’t his nephews or his father anymore, just as Baelor had ceased to exist the second the life had been robbed from his body. They were all just gone. Never would he see them again. He could only hope that the rest of his life would be short enough that it might not hurt too much to miss them all.
Soft footsteps appeared beside his. When he looked over, he was surprised by a shock of pink. Lady Kiera glanced up at him. “Might I have a word, my lord?”
He was shocked enough that he could only nod at her. She motioned towards a balcony that overlooked the courtyard they’d just burned the bodies in, and Maekar could not hide his distaste as the smell of the smoke still drifted up and around them.
Lady Kiera only gazed down at the piles of ash. She was much more composed than he’d last seen her, at Valarr’s deathbed. This was the most he’d seen of her since their marriage, likely. He thought that she might ask about his nephew, or ask for words of comfort, but she only took a deep breath and considered him warily. “I have heard some whispers that Lord Bloodraven plans to approach you with a proposal.”
He had not expected his name to fall from her lips. His own jerked up in a scowl. “He is not someone you should concern yourself with, his station is far beneath yours.”
“I have no station here,” she reminded him, and it dawned slowly on Maekar that she was correct. Her husband was gone. Her sons never began. She was more adrift than any proper lady could like to be, but instead of being insensible in her weeping she only stared sadly at the rising smoke.
“You say whispers?” Maekar finally said, willing to allow her some space to talk. It might be what she was owed by their family. By the one who had set all of this terrible grief upon them.
Lady Kiera’s mouth twitched. “That was only a jest. Valarr did tell me that you were so serious, but I thought… Well, it does not matter. One of my ladies-in-waiting has a sister who attends to Lady Shiera.” Her hands settled on the railing, palms brushing over the smooth golden rod. “My father will agree to keep our alliance so long as I stay married within the family, and Lord Bloodraven sees that the best opportunity will be served within your household.”
Beyond the rage that Brynden would be scheming already at a time such as this, was pure confusion. His household? Who was she meant to marry, that could replace what his nephew’s position had offered?
Kiera must have taken his silence to mean he understood what she was speaking of, as she continued. “He does not seem to have his sights set on any one particular suitor, so I’ve come to tell you that, when he proposes this arrangement to you, I will act in resistance should that man be your second son.”
Aerion? Married? “Gods, no.” Maekar shook his head. He would not wish that boy on any wife, just yet. “He is in Lys, besides. He will not be recalled yet.” Until he grew some and experienced a broader world.
Something eased in Lady Kiera’s shoulders. Her head bent down, and she nodded. What did she know of Aerion? What had Valarr told her? Or was it just the trial that had made her wary of his son? She drew herself back up then, and her fingers curled restlessly around the railing. “And I would not like to be married to a man who is far beyond my years.” Her words sounded delicately rehearsed. For what, Maekar couldn’t be sure, until the meaning fell upon him in a crash.
“I will not be marrying you.” He said it so quickly, so assuredly, and with such disdain that Baelor’s voice appeared in his head to admonish him for insulting a lady in such a manner. “My Lady,” he added with a nod of his head, “it is not for you to worry over.”
Rather than offense, Lady Kiera took great relief at the words. Surely she would not want to be married to a widower, far beyond her youth, and meaner than he had any right to be to those ahead of him in line for the throne.
“Well, then.” She let out a quiet breath. “I am glad we are in agreement.”
Agreement. Maekar had not yet agreed to anything. He would not be following Brynden’s instructions, should they come. And, that left only one possibility for another marriage. “You cannot possibly mean to marry Daeron.”
Kiera shrugged her shoulders up. “Out of the options, it is the most desirable.” Her eyes slid once more to the ashes on the ground. “I did not even have a choice the last time.”
“And you will give it up, again, and marry my eldest if Lord Bloodraven commands it?”
“My father commands it,” she corrected, “he needs this alliance as well. The Blackfyres cause much strife within the city sometimes.” Her mouth tilted again. “Your family has a way of doing that.”
“They are not family,” he reminded her.
She dipped her head in apology. “Either way, it is my duty. My life will be much harder, I think, should I try to fight doing what is expected of me.”
“This is not hard enough?” Maekar asked drily. He meant only the dead husband and recalled too late the dead sons.
But Lady Kiera did laugh, a soft little sound that was completely devoid of real amusement. “Indeed. So, I do not wish to make it worse.” He could not argue against that.
Maekar envisioned a realm lost to fire. It did not make sense to him that Aerys had not only been coronated, in a paltry gathering of Lords and Ladies, almost a mockery of the funeral they had just had, but now rebuked him as he pressed his brother to find out who would rule alongside him. Or in his place, rather, for anyone with any sense could see that Aerys had no intentions of ruling in any real way.
He already had ditched the poor excuse for a feast they were throwing within the Red Keep, and Maekar had been tasked with finding him, as was relayed to him by Aerys’s wife, as was relayed to her by Maekar’s mother, who still refused to speak with him.
He found his brother within the library. He was not even hiding anymore. Rather, he was bent over his books, copying down words from one page to another. He had long since ditched the crown that had been placed on his head, and when Maekar had tried to entreat him to rejoin the feast, he had merely scoffed.
“You must consider appointing your council members as soon as possible,” Maekar pressed, growing restless as he stood in front of the table Aerys sat at, and his brother hardly bothered to glance up at him.
“I’m sure you’re very interested in knowing who will take who’s place.”
“Half of the small council has died, Aerys, and unless we find a king willing to sit the throne for longer than a few minutes, you will need those to rule in your place.”
“Do you fancy yourself one of those rulers, brother?”
“I am looking out for the realm, as Baelor would have wanted us to do. Who do you intend on naming Hand?”
“Ah. So we get to the heart of the matter.”
“Your Hand?” Maekar pressed, trying not to rise to the bait that his brother was laying out so effortlessly. Aerys was smart enough to make a man walk into his own funeral pyre, if he wished, and he never put such a gift to good use.
“Lord Bloodraven.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Brynden has served in King’s Landing for as long as Baelor has. Brynden knows the courts. He keeps track of it all, Maekar.”
“I am well aware of his affinity for knowing everything.”
“And you don’t think that might serve a king well?”
“I think you are being spiteful. I think you did not like that Baelor favored me, and you are passing me over for the role because of it.”
Aerys fixed him with a look, finally. His hand stopped its incessant scratching of the quill. His eyes stayed open, violet and dispassionate. “Baelor is dead. And Brynden didn’t kill my brother.”
A great well of shame rose up within him. It was something only Aerys was able to pull out of him. Had been, ever since they were children, for Aerys was the only brother who had never been swayed by his crying or his fury. Maekar had no choice but to leave, for some sort of terrible feeling settled in his chest and wanted him to beg Aerys’s forgiveness.
His mother broke her silence with him only a few short days later. He was already putting his plans in place to return to Summerhall, even as he petitioned his brother more than once to give him the position that would have been his, should Baelor had had his way. Before he could receive a final answer, he was summoned to the queen’s chambers. Though, she was not The Queen anymore, Maekar thought, as he took in the sight of his mother sat primly in a highbacked chair. She was drenched in black. She wore a veil even, of black webbed lace, and Maekar found it hard to find her eyes behind it. He stood quietly, feeling young somehow as Myriah sat and appraised him.
“I-” he began, when the silence became too much to bear.
She cut him off as soon as he spoke. “Maekar.” Her voice was tight. “You must know why you cannot have the position.”
Because no one thought him capable of it. “Baelor wanted me to-”
“Baelor is dead.” Myriah cut him off. “And you would take his position, after taking his life.”
“Mother, I would not do such a thing.”
“I know this.” Her hands opened and closed over the wooden arms of the chair she sat in, grasping at nothing. “Despite the follies that have led us here, I know that my sons would not intentionally take each other’s lives. I have to believe that I raised you better. But others do not know this. The realm is fragile right now. It cannot handle these maneuvers.”
“Maneuvers?” It had been an accident. A horrible, blindingly stupid accident. Not a maneuver. Not anything.
“It cannot be yours. We cannot add more kindling to this fire.”
“So you’d have a bastard take his place instead?”
“Yes,” Myriah said, though it sounded more like a hiss. Here, her eyes became clear as she leaned forward. “A bastard. Or perhaps I’ll find a Dornishman for it. Or even a fucking woman. Let the realm reap what it sows. My son is dead. For what? Tell me, Maekar, what did he die for?”
He hung his head. She wanted a real answer, he could tell. “The hedge knight.”
“No,” Myriah snapped, “The trial. What was it for?”
“He attacked my son.” She must understand that. Though Maekar did not have any illusions that Aerion was in his grandmother’s good graces, at the moment. “The hedge knight struck a prince, that could not go unanswered.”
His mother stood and walked the few short steps it took to place her in front of him. Her palm struck his face. He should have expected that, he thought dully, as pain blossomed upon his cheek.
“Answer that.”
Maekar could do nothing but stare at his mother in his shock.
“Will you call for your own trial now?” Her chin raised. “The blood of the dragon has been harmed.” She was mocking him.
“He- Aerion was only-”
“Only what?” Her voice raised. “Trying to rise above his station, being cruel? Even for his usual tendencies, Maekar, this one was an overreaction.”
“It was an insult to our house. The dragon-”
“Enough with the fucking dragons!” Myriah burst out. Her hand swept out and knocked over the jug of water that stood on the table, ornate and decorated with the sigil of House Targaryen. It clattered noisily against the floor, but she did not care for it. “I have heard enough about the fucking dragons for a lifetime over. Do you see them here, Maekar?” Both of her hands flung out again, willing him to look around. “Do you fancy yourself true in your estimation that what Aerion did was correct, because of a creature that does not exist? Perhaps if you did not care so much for your own pride, your son would not twist his into mine own utter ruin!”
Despite being small in stature and soft in speech, Myriah had a way of nailing his feet to the floor with her words. He could only shake his head dumbly. His mother had never spoken to him in such a way before. Her temper had overtaken her at times, to be sure, but never enough to scream at her children. She’d had her husband before though, and her beloved firstborn.
She collapsed into a chair. “I do not wish to hear of it again,” she sighed, “Baelor was the best thing to ever grace this cursed house, and he’s gone. Let its glory die with him.”
“But Mother, Aerys-”
She laughed, bitterly and without real humor, “We both know that Aerys is no true king.”
“You should not say such things.”
She did not like him lecturing her. Her eyes dragged upwards to regard him with utter contempt. “Then charge me with treason and take my head.”
Would he ever know a day where shame didn’t fill him from head to toe? Maekar could not imagine it so. “Mother,” he said weakly.
She waved her hand. “The sun has set on House Targaryen. The gods know I tried my best to make it rise. But now my husband is dead, my son, and my little grandsons with him. Let me mourn in peace, Maekar. Leave me be. And your brother as well.” He was dismissed without so much as a goodbye.
Brynden did find him, eventually. Just before he was set to leave. Had he spent less time rifling through a pile of Valarr’s possessions that Kiera had dropped off to him, he might have avoided him altogether. That’s what Maekar told himself, rather than admit to the nagging feeling that Brynden would have found him anyway. On his fingers now sat Baelor’s heavy rings. The very ones that Valarr had filched from his father’s corpse, though Maekar could not deny that the boy had been in his rights then.
And it was to Brynden that Baelor’s position would fall. What a waste, Maekar thought as his uncle approached, what a shame.
“Nephew.” Brynden greeted him with a small nod. His hand rested almost absently on the handle of the sword he likely wore only for ornamentation. His one eye regarded Maekar for a moment, before his attention was brought to something else, behind his shoulder.
“We can skip the pleasantries,” Maekar said. He sighed, looking longingly towards the door he’d just been about to escape through.
“I should like for you to bring Lady Kiera to Summerhall with you. She will be ready to depart with your party.”
His hackles raised immediately. “You presume to tell me what to do?”
Brynden’s head tilted, a pantomime of the gesture that Baelor used to make. “Is it not a kindness towards her? To be free of this place while the wounds are still fresh?”
There was no kindness in Brynden’s decree, Maekar knew that for certain. He grunted and turned away. “You just wish to be rid of a problem.”
Brynden did not answer the accusation. “It would please the crown if you married her into your household,” he said.
“The crown? So this is how it is to be? You give me an order and hide behind my brother’s station to enforce it.”
“The order is as the King wills it.”
Aerys did not will anything, save for more books to bury his head in. Maekar could not stand to listen to Brynden’s empty words any longer. He turned towards the door. “If she is ready to depart, then she may come along.”
He could not leave Lady Kiera there, to the whims of Bloodraven and his magicking sister. His mother would be no comfort to the girl. And his own daughter Daella might like to have more of a companion than her own little sister.
There would be a certain mercy in freeing her of the court, too. Summerhall, despite holding its own ghosts, kept them away from the prying eyes that would latch onto her grief or spread rumors surrounding her worst moments. Perhaps he owed this to his nephew – to do his wife a kindness that was never afforded to him. Maekar thought that should he be able to, he would do anything to ease Valarr’s pain. But Valarr had joined his father and brother in death and only fragments of their memory remained.
Before Maekar could break through the door to the courtyard, Brynden spoke again. “It is not an easy thing, I know, to kill a brother.”
Kinslayers. That’s what they were. Together. Brynden, in service to the true crown. Maekar, in a terrible accident. His throat tightened. He stalked forward without a word to his terrible uncle and left.