The Behavior of Dragons III (Final)
Not all fics have adult content, but this blog is 18+. Maekar Targaryen x Wife!Reader
Masterlist General Synopsis: Mourning has settled over Summerhall. Word Count: 8.3k Content Warnings: Major grief ahead. This is just really heavy and I apologize in advance. AN: This is farewell for now as this fic has come to a merciful end. Thank you for all of the hysterics that have been sent to me in one form or another, as I've enjoyed every tear that's been shed. My own included. Please consider leaving any feedback you have on this! Part I Part II
Grief did not leave with the smoke.
It did not rise with the ashes, carried away on the wind as the flames devoured what remained of you. It did not scatter into the sky to be forgotten, nor did it lessen with the passing of hours or days as men often claimed such things would.
It stayed.
It lingered.
It took root.
It settled over Summerhall like a heavy, unseen shroud, draping itself across every tower and corridor, every chamber and courtyard, until the keep itself seemed to bow beneath its weight.
At first, it was quiet—so subtle it might have been mistaken for stillness. But stillness had never felt like this.This was something else entirely.
It seeped into the stones, into the very bones of the keep.
The walls, once warmed by sunlight and softened by the life that moved within them, now felt cold to the touch no matter the hour. The floors beneath wandering feet carried a hollow echo, each step striking too sharply, too loudly, as though the space itself had been emptied of something essential that once absorbed the sound.
The carved beams above—dark wood etched with careful craftsmanship—no longer creaked with age or whispered with the passing breeze.
They held silence.
Heavy.
Unbroken.
It lingered in the halls where your voice had once lived. Where you had moved with quiet purpose, your presence threading warmth through every space you entered without ever demanding notice. Laughter had once carried there—soft, fleeting, real—and even when you were not present, there had always been the sense that you might be.
Now the corridors stretched long and dim, their length exaggerated by absence. Torches burned as they always had, but their light seemed weaker somehow, their glow unable to reach as far as it once did.
Servants walked quickly, heads lowered, their voices hushed to murmurs that barely disturbed the air.
No one lingered.
No one wished to.
It clung most stubbornly to your shared chambers, the chambers Maekar now only haunted, but never slept in. He would not disturb the bed.
The doors remained closed more often than not, and when they were opened, it was with care—quiet, deliberate, as though something sacred lay within that must not be disturbed.
Inside, nothing had changed. Nothing had been touched.
The bed remained unmade, your side still bearing the faint impression of where you had last laid. The linens had not been smoothed, nor the covers straightened. They had not been replaced. Your pillow still rested where your head had once been, untouched, holding the faintest trace of you that Maekar both sought and feared losing.
Your vanity stood as you left it, jewelry scattered in quiet disarray, hairpins caught mid-motion in a glass dish as though you had only just set them down. Powders and oils that would only live within their captation–never to grace the room with their familiar scents. Your robe hung loosely over the chair, its wide sleeves draped as if waiting for your arms to return to them, and your slippers sat beneath the bed—slightly askew, one turned just enough to suggest you had stepped from them in haste.
Even the air felt different there.
Still.
Thick.
As though it had not moved since the moment you were taken from it.
As though breathing too deeply might disturb something that lingered just out of sight.
It reached into the quieter corners of the keep. The alcoves where servants once gathered to whisper now stood empty, their silence deeper than simple absence. The sunrooms, once filled with light and idle conversation, felt dimmed despite the brightness that poured through the windows.
Even the gardens had changed. They still bloomed. Still grew. But the color seemed muted, the life within them dulled, as though the world itself had taken notice of what had been lost and could not quite bring itself to remain unchanged.
Grief was not loud. It did not rage through Summerhall like a storm. It did not break or shatter or scream.
It endured.
It was in the way voices softened without thought, as though the walls themselves demanded quiet. It was in the way doors were closed with careful hands, no longer allowed to slam or echo. It was in the absence of small, ordinary sounds—the laughter of children, the murmur of idle conversation, the steady rhythm of life continuing without pause.
It was in the way the children moved. Each of them altered in ways that could not be easily named. Their steps were lighter, their voices smaller, their presence subdued as though they feared taking up too much space in a world that already felt so empty.
They carried it differently, each in their own way—but they carried it all the same. And it was in Maekar most of all because grief had not merely settled in Summerhall.
It had hollowed it.
It had carved something vital from its center—something that had once held everything together in quiet, unseen ways—and left nothing in its place.
No warmth.
No balance.
No steady presence to anchor what remained–only absence. Only an echo. Only the lingering, suffocating certainty that something irreplaceable had been lost, and that no amount of time, nor distance, nor strength of will would ever truly fill the space it left behind.
Maekar did not return to himself. Not after the pyre. Not after the ashes cooled and were gathered into urns that felt too small to hold a life so vast. Not after the bells stopped ringing, their hollow tolls fading into a silence that somehow felt louder than the sound itself.
He did not come back.
At first, it was subtle enough that one might mistake it for mourning. A missed meal here. A delayed council there. Letters left unopened on his desk, their seals unbroken, their contents unknown and, more importantly, uncared for.
He lingered longer in his solar. Spoke less. Looked past those who addressed him as though their words had to travel a greater distance to reach him—and often failed before they arrived.
It was grief, they said. It would pass.
It did not.
The withdrawal came slowly, like rot spreading beneath the surface of something once whole. Then, all at once. The doors of his solar remained closed more often than not. At first for hours, then for entire days. Eventually, they opened only when necessary—when a matter could no longer be ignored without consequence—and even then, Maekar’s presence within the room felt…partial—diminished—as though only a fraction of the man had bothered to attend.
Inside, he did not work, not as he once had. The desk that had once been buried beneath scrolls and maps and reports now sat in quiet disarray, papers scattered where they had been dropped and never touched again. Ink dried in its well. Quills lay forgotten.
He paced.
Sometimes.
Long, restless strides that carried him from one end of the room to the other, over and over again, as though movement alone might outrun the thoughts that hunted him.
Other times, he sat.
Still.
Hours slipping past unnoticed as he stared at nothing—at the wall, at the fire, at his own hands resting uselessly before him. And sometimes he did neither. He simply…endured. Sleep did not come easily and when it did, it brought you with it in an unfamiliar bed because he could not bring himself to do more than sit on the one he shared with you. When he did see you behind his eyes, it was not as you were at the end. Never as you were at the end, but as you had been before—smiling, warm, alive in ways that made waking unbearable.
He would reach for you every time and every time he would wake to emptiness. To cold sheets. To silence.
His temper did not return and that, more than anything, unsettled those around him. Maekar Targaryen had been many things—stern, proud, unyielding—but never absent.
Never hollow.
Now, there was no anger. No sharp words. No booming voice that once filled the halls and demanded obedience. There was only quiet. A quiet that did not belong to him.
The duties that had once defined him fell away like dead leaves. Petitions went unheard, left to gather dust as those who had brought them waited in vain for an audience that never came. Disputes lingered unresolved, tensions festering among those who relied on his judgment to keep order.
The lands surrounding Summerhall began to whisper.
Of neglect.
Of uncertainty.
Of a prince who no longer ruled so much as…existed.
A man who sat in his keep while the world beyond its walls continued without him, and within those same walls his children waited. They waited for him to call for them. To speak to them. To look at them. To be what he had once been–a father–but Maekar could not bear it. Not the sight of them. Not what remained of you in each of their faces.
Daeron’s eyes, haunted and knowing.
Aerion’s sharpness, twisted into something crueler in your absence.
Aegon’s quiet, aching need.
The girls—your girls—clinging to one another in ways that spoke of fear they could not name.
They were all pieces of you.
Fragments.
Reminders.
And he…he did not know how to face them without breaking entirely. So he simply did not. He remained behind closed doors. Behind stone and wood and distance that did nothing to dull the grief but everything to keep him from confronting it.
From confronting them.
He failed you, not in the moment of your death. That had been beyond him. Beyond anyone. But here, now, in the quiet aftermath. In the days that followed, and the weeks that stretched endlessly onward.
He failed you in the way he withdrew. In the way he turned inward instead of outward. In the way he let your children drift, each in their own way, each reaching for something that was no longer there—and finding nothing in its place but desolation and rejection.
Even now he failed you, and somewhere beneath the weight of his grief he knew it.
Baelor came.
The news had reached King’s Landing swiftly, carried by raven and rumor alike—your death, the babe, the silence that followed in the wake of both. It was not a message that allowed for delay, nor one that Baelor could set aside for duty or distance. He departed as soon as it was read, riding hard with only a small retinue, the road to Summerhall blurring beneath his horse’s hooves as though he might outrun what had already come to pass.
He did not. No man could. By the time the towers of Summerhall rose into view, pale against a sky that seemed too wide and too empty, Baelor already knew what he would find.
Stillness.
Absence.
Grief that clung to stone.
He entered the keep without ceremony. There were no formal greetings, no announcement of his arrival beyond the quiet stir of guards stepping aside and servants lowering their eyes. The usual rhythms of court had been disrupted, slowed to something unnatural, as though the entire place breathed differently now.
Baelor felt it immediately. That weight. That quiet. It settled over him the moment he crossed the threshold, pressing into his chest, lingering in the back of his throat like something unspoken but understood.
He had known loss before, but this…this was something that had not yet found its shape.
He was led to Maekar’s solar, or rather he found it as others had. The doors were closed–they always were.
Baelor did not knock. He simply opened them himself to face what awaited him inside.
The room beyond was dim, lit only by the low burn of a neglected hearth and the thin wash of daylight filtering through the narrow windows. Dust had begun to settle where it had no right to be, catching in the edges of untouched parchment, in the grooves of a desk that had once seen constant use.
And there sat Maekar. He sat where one might expect him to be–at his desk, in his chair. His posture straight, his shoulders broad, his presence—at a glance—unchanged. But only at a glance because the man within that frame was not the same.
He did not rise when Baelor entered. Did not acknowledge him at all. His gaze remained fixed somewhere distant—on the far wall, perhaps, or on nothing at all. His hands rested on the desk before him, unmoving, fingers slightly curled as though they had forgotten their purpose.
He looked…whole, and yet utterly ruined.
Baelor closed the door quietly behind him, but even the sound of it seemed louder than it should have been. Maekar did not react. For a long moment, Baelor simply stood there, watching, taking in the stillness, the absence, the hollow quiet that clung to his brother like a second skin. It was not the quiet of rest, nor the quiet of thought—it was something deeper, something emptied. A silence that did not soothe, but swallowed.
He had expected anger, perhaps even rage.
Something sharp.
Something alive.
But this…this was worse.
Baelor exhaled slowly, his gaze never leaving Maekar.
“I have seen men come back from battle with less of themselves missing than this,” he said at last, his voice low but firm, cutting through the stillness without raising itself. “At least then, you can name what was taken.”
Maekar did not move, nor did not respond.
Baelor took a step further into the room.
“This—” he gestured faintly, not at the solar, but at him, “—this is what happens when grief is left to sit too long without answer. It hollows. It convinces you there is nothing left worth standing for.”
Still nothing.
“You are not the first man to lose a wife,” Baelor continued, not unkindly, but without softness. “Nor will you be the last.”
A pause.
“But you may be the first to let that loss take everything else with it.” Maekar’s fingers twitched. Barely. Baelor’s tone shifted then—not gentler, but more deliberate.
“You think what you are doing is honoring her,” he said. “Sitting in her rooms. Breathing in what remains of her. Refusing to move, as though stillness might preserve what is already gone.” He shook his head once. “It does not.”
Silence, oppressively heavy.
“It erodes you,” Baelor went on. “Slowly. Quietly. Until there is nothing left of the man she dedicated her life to.” That landed and he saw it in the slight tightening of Maekar’s jaw. In the way his shoulders drew in—not defensively, but as though something had struck where it should not.
“You loved her,” Baelor said, and this time there was no question in it. “You still do.” Maekar’s breath shifted just slightly. “Then do not turn that love into something that destroys what remains of her in this world.”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
“She did not leave you with nothing,” Baelor added. His gaze flickered, just briefly, toward the door. Toward the keep beyond it. “She left you with them.”
Maekar’s silence deepened, but it was no longer empty. Baelor did not press further. He did not need to because the truth had been placed between them—not as comfort—but as a weight.
Baelor let the silence sit. He did not rush to fill it, did not offer some empty comfort that would break apart the moment it touched the air between them. He had learned, long ago, that there were griefs too large for soothing—griefs that did not want gentleness, only truth. So he stood and he watched.
“You think the grief excuses you,” Baelor said at last. His voice was quieter now, but firmer. Not unkind—never unkind—but unyielding in a way Maekar himself once had been. “That because she is gone, your duty died with her.” Maekar did not move. “It did not,” Baelor continued.
He stepped closer still, until he stood at the edge of the desk, close enough now that Maekar could not pretend he was not there—though he still refused to look at him. “It changed.”
Maekar’s fingers curled slightly against the wood. Baelor’s gaze hardened, just enough.
“You speak as though they have been abandoned,” Maekar grinds out, voice thick.
“I speak as though something has been taken from them that cannot be replaced.” A pause.
“It has.” Maekar’s breath shifted.
“But you stand there and make it worse.” The words were not loud, but they struck as intended.
At that, Maekar’s head turned to his brother, slowly, as though the effort of it cost him something. His eyes met Baelor’s at last—and what Baelor saw there was not anger. Not even defiance. Only something raw—something stripped down to its bones.
“I do not know how,” Maekar said, shame coating his words. The words were rough, dragged from the depths of him. “I do not know how to look at them and not see her.” His voice faltered ever so slightly. “I do not know how to speak to them when every word feels…wrong.” His jaw clenched again. “I do not know how to be what she was to them.”
Baelor did not flinch. “You are not meant to be her,” he said plainly. Maekar’s gaze flickered. “You are meant to be their father.” The distinction settled between them.
Heavy.
Simple.
Unavoidable.
“They do not need you to replace her, nor fill her absence.” Baelor went on. “They need you to remain.” His voice lowered. “And you have not.”
Maekar looked away again.
The words had landed.
That much was clear.
“I see them,” Maekar admitted after a long moment. Quiet, almost reluctant. “I hear them in the halls. I know where they go, what they do…how they grieve.” His hand tightened faintly against the desk. “And I do nothing.”
Baelor said nothing.
“Because if I do,” Maekar continued, voice growing rougher, more strained, “if I look too closely—if I let myself—” He stopped, the words catching.
Baelor finished it for him. “You will break.”
Maekar closed his eyes. “Yes.”
The admission hung between them.
Bare.
Unshielded.
Baelor exhaled slowly, then, after a moment—
“So you would rather they break instead.” Maekar’s eyes snapped open. The words struck harder than anything else had. “That is what you are choosing,” Baelor said.
Still calm.
Still measured.
But there was steel beneath it now.
“You think your suffering absolves you of what comes next.” He shook his head once. “It does not.” Maekar stared at him.
Something shifting behind his eyes.
Something painful.
Something real.
“They are already drifting,” Baelor added, quieter now, but no less certain. “Each in their own way.” A pause. “And they will continue to do so.” Maekar’s throat tightened. “Unless you decide to be their father again.”
Silence fell once more, but it was different now.
Not empty.
Not hollow.
Heavy with something that demanded an answer. Maekar did not give one—not yet, but for the first time since Baelor had entered the room, he was no longer entirely still.
Daeron vanished, though not all at once. Not in any dramatic display that might have drawn notice or forced intervention. He did not rage. He did not break in ways that could be seen. He simply…faded.
At first, it was small. He missed every meal. No one thought much of it—Daeron had always been quiet, always withdrawn in ways the others were not. Meals missed were normal for him, but never altogether. His seat remained empty longer than it should have, his absence stretching from an inconvenience into something…noticed, but still, nothing was done. Because grief made allowances.
Then he stopped appearing in the yard. No more quiet presence at the edge of training, no more half-hearted attempts to participate in things he had never truly cared for. The boys he once lingered near stopped expecting him.
Stopped looking.
And then—he was simply gone.
From the halls.
From the rooms.
From the spaces where he had once existed in quiet, unassuming ways.
He did not disappear entirely, not in truth. There were still traces of him.
Whispers.
Fragments.
A servant might speak, hushed and uncertain, of finding him slumped against a stable wall, half-conscious and reeking of wine.
A guard might mention seeing him at the edge of the grounds, wandering aimlessly with glassy eyes fixed on something no one else could see.
A stableboy might recall the way he sat among the horses, back against the wood, a cup hanging loose in his hand as though he had forgotten why he held it at all.
He drank, not as he used to. Now, he drank to end his memories as well as his dreams. He drank like someone trying to outrun something that could not be outrun, but the memories remained and dreams did not quiet.
They never did—they followed him.
Into sleep.
Into waking.
Into the spaces between.
“They always come true,” he murmured one night, voice slurred, words barely forming as he spoke to the empty air. There was no one to hear him. No one to answer. And somewhere deep within him—beneath the wine, beneath the exhaustion, beneath the certainty that had once defined him—something began to fracture.
Because what was the purpose of seeing, if it could not be changed? What was the purpose of knowing, if it only led to loss?
Where Daeron drowned, Aerion burned. His grief did not soften him. It did not bend him toward gentleness or reflection. It did not make him quieter.
It sharpened him, like steel dragged against stone.
Again.
And again.
Until every edge was honed to something dangerous.
He grew crueler. Not in ways that could be easily punished. Not in ways that could be corrected with a word or a reprimand, but in the small things.
The cutting remark delivered too quickly. The look held too long. The quiet cruelty that slipped into his voice when he spoke to those weaker than himself.
Servants avoided him. They learned quickly.To step aside. To keep their eyes lowered. To finish their tasks without drawing his attention.
His siblings feared him. Even when they did not name it as fear. Even when they tried to stand firm. Because there was something in him now that had not been there before. Something that had grown in the space you left behind.
The last fragile threads that had once tied him to something softer—something that remembered warmth, kindness, affection—had snapped.
Not cleanly—not all at once—but enough, and what remained was jagged.
Uneven.
Dangerous.
He had learned something in your absence. A lesson he had not asked for, but took nonetheless. That love could be taken. That it could be ripped away without warning, without reason, without care for those left behind. And if that was true, then perhaps it was better to take first. To wound before being wounded. To control what could be controlled, even if it meant breaking what remained.
And still—he looked for you in quiet moments when no one watched. When no one expected anything of him.
He would pause in a doorway. Linger in a room he had no reason to enter. Stand in the corridor just outside your chambers, gaze fixed on the door as though he might will it to open.
He listened—for your voice, for your steps, for the sound of your presence that had once filled every space so completely. He would never admit it, not to anyone. Not even to himself.
But sometimes…his hands would still. His breath would catch, and for the briefest moment he looked like a boy again.
Lost.
Daella and Rhae clung to one another. They did not speak of it. They did not need to. It was understood in the way their hands found each other without thought. In the way they sat close—always close—shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, as though distance itself had become something to fear.
Night after night they slept in the same bed, neither willing to close their eyes alone. The dark felt different now.
Too large.
Too uncertain.
If one stirred, the other woke. If one cried, the other held her. If one reached, the other was already there. They moved through the halls together—a single unit—never separated for long because letting go meant risking it. Not just loss, but disappearance.
They had seen how quickly it could happen. How suddenly someone could be there and then not.
If one drifted the other feared she would follow, so they held on. Fingers intertwined so tightly that their knuckles blanched, their grip unwavering even when it hurt. Even when it left marks.
It was better that than letting go.
And Aegon…Aegon was utterly alone. He did not cry as loudly anymore, not after the first few days. Not after his voice had gone hoarse from calling for you in the night, from sobbing into pillows that did not answer him, from waiting—always waiting—for something that never came.
At first, he had believed it might—that if he called loudly enough, long enough—you would return.
But you did not.
And slowly, painfully, he learned. Now, he was quiet. Too quiet. He wandered the halls with small, uncertain steps, his presence easy to miss if one was not looking for him. He paused outside doors that never opened. Lingered in places where you had once been—sunlit corners, quiet chambers, the edges of rooms where your voice had once softened everything. As if your presence might still remain. As if it might be found, if only he searched hard enough.
Sometimes he would sit on your bed. Careful, always careful. Never in your place. That remained untouched. Sacred in a way he did not fully understand, but respected all the same.
He longed for it—to feel where you had been—to press himself into the warmth that no longer existed, but he did not.
Instead, he sat at the edge. Small. Still. His fingers clutching at the coverlet as though it might anchor him as though it might anchor you.
“Mum?” he whispered once.
Soft.
Hopeful.
Afraid.
The word lingered in the air and faded, but there was no answer. There would never be an answer. And slowly—quietly—Aegon began to understand that too. Even if he did not yet have the words for it.
Baelor found him there.
Not by chance, though it might have seemed so to anyone watching. He had begun to look for the boy in quiet places—in the spaces where grief tended to gather, where small bodies tried to make themselves smaller still. And so he came to your chambers, expecting the silence, expecting the weight of it—
But not this.
Aegon lay on the edge of the bed, his small frame curled inward as though he might fold into himself entirely if he only tried hard enough. His legs were drawn up, his arms wrapped around them, his cheek pressed faintly against the coverlet that still held the shape of a life that no longer occupied it.
He was so still.
Too still.
Not the restless quiet of a child trying to behave, but the careful stillness of one who feared that any movement might disturb something sacred.
Or fragile.
Or gone.
Baelor’s chest tightened painfully. He had seen boys in war camps, sons of men who never returned. He had seen grief before it had time to settle, raw and loud and impossible to ignore. But this…this quiet, contained sorrow—this was something else. Something that did not know how to be expressed. Something that had nowhere to go.
He approached slowly, deliberately. As one might approach a wounded thing, uncertain if it would startle or retreat or simply…remain. The floor did not creak beneath him. The room did not change. Aegon did not move.
Baelor lowered himself to one knee before the boy, bringing himself down to his level so that he would not have to look up so far.
“Aegon,” he said gently. The boy lifted his head slowly, as though the effort cost him.
Their eyes met and for a moment—just a moment—hope flickered there.
Small.
Fragile.
But unmistakable.
It struck Baelor harder than anything else had. That brief, desperate belief that he might be someone else.
It was extinguished just as quickly.
“You are not her,” Aegon said quietly. The words were not accusing, not bitter. They were simply true. Spoken with the kind of clarity only a child could manage in the face of something so final.
Baelor swallowed. “No,” he admitted. The word felt insufficient. It felt like a failure. But anything else would have been a lie. And Baelor would not lie to him.
Not about this.
Aegon nodded once.
Small.
Certain.
As if he had expected nothing else. Of course he had.
Baelor’s gaze lingered on him, taking in the details he had not wanted to notice before—the faint shadows beneath the boy’s eyes, the way his hair sat unkempt at the crown, the stiffness in his posture that spoke not of discipline but of restraint.
Of holding something in.
“You have been very quiet,” Baelor said after a moment, his voice softer now, careful not to press too hard, not to break what little composure the boy held together.
Aegon’s fingers tightened slightly around his knees.
“I am trying,” he said. The words were so simple, so small, and yet they carried something immense. Baelor felt something twist in his chest.
“What are you trying to do?” he asked gently. Aegon hesitated.His gaze dropped to the bed. To the space beside him. To the place he would not touch.
“Not cry,” he said. Baelor exhaled slowly—not in disappointment, not in correction, but in understanding.
“She told me to be brave,” Aegon added, quieter now. “She said I must always do the right thing. Even when it is scary.” His voice wavered. “And crying…does not feel like the right thing.” Baelor studied him.
This small boy, trying to hold himself to a standard he did not yet understand, clinging to your words as though they were the only map he had left.
“That depends,” Baelor said after a moment. Aegon looked up again. Not hopeful this time, but listening.
“Being brave does not mean you do not cry,” Baelor continued. “It means you feel what you feel…even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.” Aegon’s brow furrowed faintly, as though the idea did not quite fit with what he had been holding onto.
“But if I cry,” he said slowly, “then she is really gone.” The words struck deeper than anything else. Baelor did not look away.
“No,” he said quietly, shaking his head gently. “She is gone whether you cry or not.” Aegon’s lip trembled. “But crying…” Baelor went on, more gently now, “that is not for her.” He reached out, hesitating only briefly before placing his hand lightly over the boy’s. “That is for you.”
Silence settled between them. Not heavy. Not suffocating, but uncertain.
Aegon looked down at their hands, at the difference in size.
In strength.
In warmth.
“I do not like to cry,” he admitted. Baelor’s grip tightened just slightly.
“I know.”
Another pause.
“I keep thinking…” Aegon’s voice faltered. “If I go to sleep…maybe she will come back.” Baelor’s heart clenched.
He had heard those words before from other children. From grown men who had never learned to say them aloud.
“And does she?” he asked gently. Aegon shook his head.
“No,” he whispered. Baelor nodded once, slowly.
“That does not mean she is gone from you,” he said. Aegon was quiet for a long moment.
Then he spoke again.
Softly.
Carefully.
As though choosing each word the way he had once been taught.
“She told me once,” Aegon said, eyes still lowered, “that love does not leave when people do.” Baelor stilled.
“That it stays where it was given,” Aegon continued, voice trembling but certain in a way that did not belong to a child his age. “And it changes shape so it can still be felt.” His fingers curled slightly in Baelor’s grasp. “But I do not feel it the same way now.” Baelor’s chest tightened.
“It is…quieter,” Aegon said, searching for the word. “And it hurts more.”
A pause.
Then, with a small, fragile breath—“Did I do something wrong, that it changed?”
That…that struck him. Harder than any cry. Harder than any plea. Baelor’s hand tightened around his.
Firm.
Certain.
“No,” he said, and there was no gentleness in it this time, only truth. “You did nothing wrong.” Aegon’s shoulders sagged, just slightly, as if he had been holding that question alone for far too long.
“She said it would never leave me,” Aegon whispered.
“It has not,” Baelor replied. Aegon finally looked up at him again. Not with hope. Not with expectation. But with something quieter, something searching.
“Then why does it feel like it did?” Baelor held his gaze. And for a moment he had no answer that would not break them both. So he told him the only truth he could.
“Because you loved her very much,” Baelor said. Aegon’s face crumpled then. Not loudly. Not all at once, but slowly as the understanding settled in. And this time he did not try to stop the tears.
Across the keep, Maekar sat alone in his solar. The room was dark, unlit, unlived in. His hands rested on the table before him, unmoving, his gaze fixed on nothing at all.
He had thought his grief would rage, would tear through him like fire, would burn and burn until nothing remained.
But this…this was worse. This was absence. This was the slow, suffocating realization that the world had not ended with you.
That it continued. That it expected him to continue with it. Without you.
His teeth clenched. His eyes burned and still he did not rise. You had asked something of him in your final moments.
Take care of them.
Even when they are difficult.
Even when they hurt you.
And somewhere, deep within the hollow shell that remained of him something stirred.
Not strong.
Not yet.
But present.
A flicker, a memory of something he once was. Of something you had loved. It was small, so very small, and the darkness around it was vast.
Your shared chambers continued to remain as you left them.
No one dared change it—not the servants, not the children, and certainly not Maekar.
The bed was still unmade.
Your side—untouched since the moment he tore you from it in a panic, your warmth stolen too quickly for the linens to settle properly. The sheets remained creased where your body laid from sleep, the impression faint but stubborn, as though it refused to forget you. The blood that remained was barely visible as it dried within the deep crimson fibers, but Maekar could see it. He knew what lingered.
Your pillow still held your scent. He knew it did because he had buried his face into it more than once, breathing you in like a dying man gasping for air—desperate, frantic, and afraid.
Afraid of the day it would fade.
Afraid of the day there would be nothing left of you at all.
Your vanity stood just as you had left it. Jewelry scattered in quiet disarray—rings, chains, the small things you wore without thought, now rendered sacred in their stillness.
Hairpins tossed carelessly into a glass dish. One half-fallen, caught on the rim as though you had meant to fix it and never did.
Your robe hung over the back of a chair.
Soft.
Worn.
Familiar under his fingertips.
And your slippers—just beneath the bed. One slightly ahead of the other. As though you had stepped out of them in haste. As though you would return to slip them back on at any moment.
Maekar could not breathe in that room and yet he could not leave it.
The quilt was where you left it, folded over the arm of the lounging sofa near the window, thread still trailing from the needle you had abandoned mid-stitch.
Nearly finished.
Soft.
Carefully made.
A gift for the son who never lived to feel it.
That was what fractured him further.
Maekar sat there now, hunched forward on the edge of the sofa where you’d sit, the blanket clutched tightly in his shaking hands. He had not meant to touch it. Had sworn he would not disturb anything—not a single piece of you, but it had called to him.
Or perhaps he had simply given in.
His fingers traced the stitching, rough against the delicate work you had done. Each one of your children received one when they were born, each with their own dragon motifs and colors. This one was an emerald green with gold thread. There was one corner missing, incomplete. You still had time to finish it before he would be born—you were supposed to.
Maekar could see it so clearly—your hands moving steadily, patiently, weaving warmth into something meant to protect, to comfort, to love. You had made this out of love for the babe you hadn’t met yet. And now it was all that remained.
A broken sound tore from his chest.
He pressed the blanket to him, clutching it against his ribs as though it might hold him together, as though it might somehow bridge the impossible distance between what was and what should have been.
“I cannot do this,” he rasped. His voice cracked, splintered beyond recognition. “I cannot—” His shoulders shook violently now, the sobs no longer restrained, no longer buried beneath pride or anger or stubborn, unyielding strength.
There was nothing left to hold them back. Nothing left to protect.
“I am failing you,” he choked, pressing his face into the fabric, breathing in the faintest trace of you that still lingered there. “Even now—I am failing you—”
The words dissolved into broken grief, into something raw.
Something helpless.
Something that would have once shamed him, but now simply existed. He remained curled inward, large frame trembling, the blanket twisted in his grip as though it were the only thing anchoring him to the world.
“I was supposed to protect you,” he whispered hoarsely, voice muffled against the fabric. “That was my purpose. That was—everything.” He gasped for breath. “I was supposed to protect all of you,” Maekar continued, words spilling now, uncontrolled. “And I could not even do that.”
His hands tightened. “I could not save our son.” His breath hitched violently. “I could not save you.”
Silence.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
“I cannot even save what remains.”
That—that was the truth of it.
Not the death.
Not the loss.
But what came after.
The silence that followed was different. It wasn’t empty nor was it hollow hollow, but it was heavy with something else—something difficult—something that required more than grief.
Maekar’s hands loosened. He looked down at the blanket once more, thumb brushing over the careful stitching you had left behind.
A final piece of you.
A final act of love.
“I do not know how to fix this,” he admitted openly. The words were small, fragile, nothing like the man he had once been.
Maekar closed his eyes. The tears still fell and they were relentless.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Perhaps not ever.
But beneath it—beneath the ruin, the grief, the unbearable weight of loss—something shifted. Something you had left behind. Not in your things, not in the room, but in him.
He still held the blanket, but for the first time since you were taken from him he did not feel entirely alone.
Grief did not leave Maekar to mourn in silence.
It spoke.
At first, it was subtle—a trick of the eye, a flicker at the edge of his vision when he lingered too long in your chambers.
He would turn and, for the briefest moment, he swore you were there, sitting on the bed as you always did— back straight, hands folded neatly in your lap as you watched him with that quiet, knowing smile.
The one meant only for him.
“My love,” you would say.
Soft.
Warm.
Real.
His breath would catch, his chest would ache, and he would take a step toward you—only for the space to be empty.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
It worsened.
He began to hear you.
In the quiet hours of the night, when Summerhall slept and the world felt distant and hollow, he would lie awake in that bed—your side still untouched—and listen.
At first, it was nothing more than memory—he told himself that.
The soft slide of slippers across stone. The faint rustle of fabric. The quiet rhythm of your breathing in the dark. Things he had known so well they had etched themselves into him.
But then—he heard the bathing room.
The trickle of water. The sound of a basin being filled.
He sat up, heart pounding, listening as it came again.
Soft.
Steady.
Impossible.
Maekar rose slowly, bare feet silent against the floor as he moved toward the adjoining room.
“…my love?” he called. His voice was hoarse.
Uncertain.
Hopeful.
Gods, he was hopeful.
He pushed the door open and the room was empty.
Dark.
Dry.
Still.
No water was present, no movement within.
Nothing.
He stood there for a long time and stared, waiting, but you did not come back.
There were nights he could not bear to sleep because sleep meant waking and waking meant losing you again, so instead he lingered in that place between.
The place where you still existed, where you still smiled at him from the bed, where your hand reached for his, where your voice called his name like it always had.
“Stay,” he would whisper into the dark. “Please…just stay.” And sometimes—in those fragile, fleeting moments—he believed you did. But morning always came.
Cruel.
Unyielding.
And with it, emptiness.
He began to dread his own mind. The way it betrayed him. The way it gave you back only to tear you away again. Over and over—relentless.
“I am losing myself,” he muttered one evening, standing alone in your chambers, his reflection staring back at him from the polished metal of your mirror.
The man looking back was not the one you had loved. His eyes were hollow, his face drawn. His grief…uncontained and palpable.
“I am becoming a madman.” The word lingered.
Madman.
He almost laughed because it felt true. Because it felt easier than admitting the truth—that he did not want to let you go. That he would rather be haunted by you than live in a world where you were truly gone.
He merely had to close his eyes and there you were, clear as day as you stood before him.
Alive.
Whole.
Smiling.
His breath hitched.
“Do not make me wake,” he whispered, voice trembling. “Please…not yet.” You stepped closer as you always did. As you always had.
Your hand lifted and for a moment he swore he felt it.
Warm.
Familiar.
Home.
His knees nearly gave out.
“Just a little longer,” he begged.
Your lips parted as if to speak, as if to answer, and then Maekar’s eyes flew open once more.
The room was empty. The air cold. His hand hung uselessly in the space where you had been. His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts.
Gone.
Again.
Always gone.
A broken sound escaped him.
He staggered back, gripping the edge of the vanity to steady himself, his head bowing as the weight of it crashed down once more.
“I cannot keep doing this,” he rasped, but even as he said it he knew he would because the alternative was so much worse.
Outside, the halls of Summerhall remained quiet.
Still.
Heavy with grief.
And within them walked a man who had once been strong.
Now haunted.
Now fractured.
Now caught between what was real and what he so desperately wished still was, and somewhere deep within that fractured mind your voice still lingered.
Soft.
Gentle.
Unreachable.
It called him back to something he was not yet ready to face—the world without you.
Aegon had learned, in the quiet and terrible way children do, that no one was coming.
Not anymore.
Not when he woke from dreams that still held your voice. Not when the halls felt too large, too empty. Not when the world pressed too hard against his small chest and made it difficult to breathe.
Baelor tried. Gods, he tried. He sat with him, spoke gently, offered what comfort he could—but Baelor was not you. And it was abundantly clear that Baelor was not his father, and Aegon needed his father desperately, so with all the courage he possessed, Aegon went looking for him.
The halls of Summerhall stretched long and silent before him, shadows clinging to the corners as though even the light had begun to retreat. Aegon walked slowly—carefully—as if the wrong step might break something fragile, or perhaps as if it already had.
He passed servants who lowered their eyes, guards who said nothing, doors that remained closed, until he reached the one he had been avoiding.
Your chambers.
He stood outside of it for a long moment.
Small.
Alone.
His hand hovered near the latch, trembling just slightly, then he pushed it open.
Maekar was inside just as Aegon hoped he would be, but didn’t expect it.
The room still had not changed, not since you left it. Not since you were taken from it.
And Maekar—Maekar sat at the edge of the sofa still, hunched forward, elbows braced on his knees, the unfinished blanket gathered loosely in his hands.
He did not look up when the door opened.
Perhaps he thought it was nothing, or that Baelor had found him again. He did not have the will to face either.
Aegon stepped inside, the door clicking softly shut behind him.
“Father?” His voice was small, too small. Maekar flinched. The word cut through him—sharp, jarring, real in a way nothing else had been in days.
Slowly—too slowly—he lifted his head. His eyes found Aegon and for a moment he did not recognize his own son. Not because he did not know his son, but because the boy before him looked…different. Smaller. Fragile in a way that had nothing to do with size. There was something missing, something that had once been held together by you.
“Aegon,” Maekar said. His voice was rough, unsteady as if unused or mistreated. The boy took a step closer when he was not immediately rejected. Then he took another, each step taken until he stood just a few paces away.
“I… I could not find you,” Aegon said quietly. Maekar’s chest tightened.
“I have been here.” The words felt wrong the moment they left him. Aegon nodded anyway as if accepting something that should not have needed acceptance.
Silence stretched.
Heavy.
Uncertain.
Aegon’s fingers twisted together in front of him.
“I had a dream,” he said. Maekar stiffened. Daeron’s shadow loomed even there, but Aegon was not Daeron. Aegon was…he was a child.
“I thought she came back,” Aegon whispered. The words were so soft they nearly didn’t exist, but Maekar heard them clearly.
Gods, he heard them.
“And then I woke up,” Aegon continued, voice wavering. “And she was not there.” Maekar’s grip tightened on the blanket. He knew that feeling all too well. Too intimately.
Aegon looked at him then, really looked, and whatever he saw made his small face crumple.
“I tried to be brave,” he said, tears spilling over now. “Like she said. I tried not to cry.” Each word struck like a blow.
“But I do not know how to be brave without her.”
That was the final fracture. It was not a violent demolition, nor was it loud…what it was devastating all the same.
Maekar stared at him, at this boy who held his likeness. This small, grieving boy who had come to him not with anger, not with defiance, but with need.
And Maekar…Maekar had not been there.
“I do not know how either,” Maekar admitted, his jaw clenching so his lips did not tremble as he faced his youngest son. The words were quiet, raw, honest.
Aegon blinked as if he had not expected that answer. As if he had expected something stronger, or worse—nothing at all.
Maekar swallowed thickly, then shifted. He placed the quilt down where he had taken it from and looked to his son.
“My boy,” he said, voice thick, but gentle in a way the boy had never heard from him. Maekar’s hand extended, beckoning the boy over from where he was standing. “Come here.”
Aegon hesitated, but only for a moment, then he moved. He crossed the space between them in small, uncertain steps until he stood close enough to reach.
Close enough to be held.
Maekar’s arms lifted. They felt heavy, unfamiliar to his own body as though he had forgotten how to use them for anything but loss, but when Aegon stepped into them—something remembered.
He pulled the boy close—carefully, tightly—as if afraid he might break. As if afraid he might disappear too.
Aegon clung to him instantly, his small arms wrapping around his fathers neck. He pressed his face into Maekar’s shoulder, his much smaller hands fisting into his tunic as the tears he had tried so hard to hold back finally came.
“I want her,” Aegon sobbed. Maekar’s breath shattered.
“I know,” Maekar whispered into Aegon’s hair, pressing his hand to the back of the boy’s head. “I know.”
“I want her back.”
“So do I.”
They stayed like that on the edge of the sofa, in the room that still belonged to you, holding onto each other because there was nothing else left to hold.
Maekar closed his eyes tightly and for the first time since your death he did not see you.
He felt something else.
Small.
Fragile.
But real.
Aegon.
And beneath the grief—beneath the madness, the longing, the unbearable weight of losing you—something shifted.
Not enough.
Not yet.
But something.
Because you had asked this of him.
And this time—this time—he did not turn away.
