This mfer lives I decided it- also part two probably because we need some FLUFF. Also reader claimed Silverwing as a child and will use that mfter to battle
Warnings/tags: ANGST, blood and violence, death, dragon fighting and death, death via drowning and burning alive, angst, angst, some fluff, reader is absolutely down bad for him but can't show it, but will die for him
A cold chill filled the misty morning air and beads of moisture pooled on the exposed skin of her pale, shaking hands. It smelled of salt mixed with hot smoke and brimstone along with a soft undertone of pine. It’s aggressive and overwhelming, but somehow it felt like home to her all the same. Throughout the months the air had begun to freeze, a pervasive cold that settled into her bones like stone. She found herself drowning in the feeling, her dragon blood resenting the chill seeping into her body.
Summer was drifting away with each passing day, the war made sure of that. With each death, each lie and deception, the world permanently shifted and she feared the repercussions of her family.
This wasn’t how it was meant to be.
Queen Rhaenyra should be on the throne right now, ruling as her father, King Viserys, decreed it many moons ago. How easy it would have been for Alicent and Aegon to abdicate, but the pride of men and women does not die so easily. It clings like sap, sticking to the skin and absorbing into their very souls. And so, they are forced to fight a needless war, just to set things right.
It was a betrayal to her family to be here, she knew this implicitly. But she couldn’t sit idly by while their dragons and family were uselessly slain, whilst the very magic of this world died with each passing. She couldn’t sit idly by while her family murdered and maimed her betrothed and his family- her family. The world would remember her as a kinslayer perhaps, but how does a title compare to a life?
The choice was simple.
So she fled Kings Landing three moons ago in the dark shroud of night. The dragon pit was virtually inaccessible during the day, having been banned by her mother and Aegon, but the patrols were more lax at night and so she slipped by, clinging to her cloak with trembling, freezing hands. It was difficult leaving her home, even more so knowing that sweet Heleana would be left alone at the mercy of her family- left alone with a dead son and screaming daughter.
It would’ve been easier to remain at home, to enjoy the warmth and familiarity of the Red Keep’s gardens. She supposed that Aegon’s Garden would suffice for now, even if the trees and roses were far too dark and dangerous for her liking. Everything here was far too dark for her liking.
A shadow seeps into her vision, obscuring her view of the dark, cracked stone and startling her from her pointless musings. Violet eyes flicker up, trailing over the darkly clad, slim body before they lock onto the brooding figure of Jacaerys peering down at her- dark eyes crinkled in something akin to happiness. Or perhaps it’s trepidation. He smiles at her tensely, shuffling on his feet before motioning to the bench next to her, silently asking for permission. She just nods and shifts over, tucking her dress beneath her thigh to allow him more room.
They sit in silence for a moment, neither knowing what to say, despite everything needing to be said at once. Once upon a time, they were betrothed, but her mothers betrayal and Aegon's usurpation ruined that for them, but the feelings still lingered. In Rhaenyra’s eyes, she was a traitor's blood, one unworthy of her son's hand- far less so than Baela.
“I-” She pauses and sighs, wringing her fingers together before continuing, “how does the war progress?”
“Mother believes we shall win soon, it appears. She called the council for an emergency meeting soon. I-” he pauses and turns towards her, “I wanted to see you before I went to her. To speak about our-”
“Our what, my lord? According to the Queen there is nothing and there will never be anything.”
“Please, do not-”
The air shifts aggressively as she shoots up, her chest clenching as her eyes pinch shut, trying desperately to quell the rising tears. Their destinies are no longer intertwined and she will not fight to destroy what little favor she has left with the queen.
“Good day, my lord. I wish you the best this evening.”
Tears fell freely down her flushed face as she rushes away desperately, her pale dress gathering loose, blackened dust as she goes. It was miserable seeing him like this, even worse when she heard the wavering of his beautiful voice and glanced into the glassiness of his strong eyes. When she left Kings Landing she held onto desperate hope Rhaenyra would allow them to continue, to get married under the Gods. But she was foolish to hope.
And even more foolish to love him still.
But he was so easy to love, so easy to be around. He was light when there was none- fire in the dark. He was soft when men were hard and cruel. He was quiet when others yelled, cunning when others were stupid and naive. Whatever he needed to be, he was- adaptable and strong. Just like his mother.
But he was taken from her, even though she fled to be with him, betrayed her family to be with him.
He continues to yell after her after she runs, but he doesn’t chase. No matter how much they both want him to.
`
She finds herself in the Dragonmont later, her hands stroking the silvery, blue scales of Silverwing. She purred underneath her touch, the dragons striking blue eyes staring at her very soul. They were bonded for life and each of them would die for the other- or die together.
The dragon knew of her pain, knew of the plight wracking her riders very body. There was nothing Silverwing could do, however. And so they shared the pain together, relishing in each others presence.
“This war will be over soon, sister. Then we will be free of these shackles, but-”
“Come, Vermax!”
Jacaerys’ voice rings out throughout the cavern, sounding oddly unsteady in her ears. Baela follows quickly after, crying out for Moondancer. Anxiety and fear spikes in her chest for some unknown reason and Silverwing begins to screech in discomfort, her cries echoing loudly in her mind.
“Shhh, Silverwing,” She pats the dragon's head, lulling her down with a placating hand. “Wait here, sister, I will return shortly.”
Muffled yelling permeates the air further into the cavern and she follows, desperately seeking the panicked voice of Baela and Jacaerys. Each shout, each word tightens her chest with a spike of fear. She knows something is wrong, the feeling settles deep within her chest- pervasive and overwhelming.
“They killed my brother, Baela!”
Lucerys.
Poor, young Lucerys who was ripped apart by Vhagar’s massive jaws and teeth. Murdered by her demonic brother.
“I won’t let them take her as well.”
When she turns the corner, Jacaerys has Baela’s arm within his grasp, firmly holding her within inches of his body. Palpable excitement fills his face, an unrestrained smile as he stares into her face, begging her to join him on his quest. It forces her to stop in her tracks, sorrow and dejection filling her very soul. But neither of them notice her presence, yet.
“We are ready! We can win this victory for her,” he shakes his head in pride, fire flickering in his eyes like a dragon stalking his next meal. “Was this not always our purpose?”
She can’t hold it in anymore.
“What victory?” It’s pathetic how shaky and soft her voice is in this thundering cavern. But it echoes nonetheless, and he wrenches himself away from Baela, his face widening further into surprise. “What victory?”
It’s Baela who answers, “there is war in the Gullet. We shall meet them there.”
Jace perks up again, his face elating as he steps towards her, his hands raising in a small plea. “Come with us, please! We can win-”
“The queen, has she approved of this?”
She knows Rhaeneyra would never let him go, not so soon after the death of Lucerys and Rhaenys. They all know the answer, and she watches with a firm, pointed glare as Baela and Jace remain silent in front of her- refusing to meet her eyes, shame overwhelming them. That's all the answer she needs and she shakes her head whilst backing away.
“The Queen needs to remain safe,” Jacaerys struts forwards, reaching towards her with a desperate hand, pleading for her to place her fingers in his. Immediately she flinches away from his contact and backs away, shaking her head once more, “our men are dying out there, we need to leave. Now.”
With that, he walks away, calling again for Vermax who trills in response to his riders calls. Baela remains still for a moment, looking between the two, watching as the rift boldens in between them. Because of her. Because of this war they are living in. For a moment she considers staying, but Jacaerys needs her and Moondancer to aid him in this battle. So Baela turns and walks away, leaving her alone in the dark shadows of Dragonmont.
There’s two options, right now.
One is to return to Dragonstone and report back to the Queen- to earn and keep her favor in order to protect her life and future. Or she can commit treason and fly out to fight at Jace’s side. To defend him in the name of love. The decision should be hard, she should fear giving up her life to defend his.
But it was easy- her life for his.
“Silverwing! To me!”
The dragon roars throughout the cave, her shrills and screeches echoing loudly throughout the loud cavern as she claws to her rider. There’s no time for them to prepare for this war, no time to dress in proper leathers or armor. A simple dress and gloves would have to do for now.
Silverwing bows before her, leaning her neck into the ground so she can climb into the saddle easier.
“Fly, Silverwing! To the Gullet!”
With a roar, Silverwing rushes down the cavern, chasing the light of day filtering down through the tunnel opening. She breaks through and her wings flap loudly, pushing the air down as she ascends into the air. Moondancer and Vermax are leagues in front of her, but she follows, Silverwing gaining ground on them in no time.
For a second she catches Jace's eyes and she feels pride soar through her at the smile he gives her.
It was the right choice.
`
The break through the clouds and her heart clenches at the sight below. The Gullet is on fire, ships and men screaming as the burn and choke on fiery swords. Arrows soar through the smoke, hitting man and wood with reckless abandon. She watches as men fly over the edge and land in the water, sinking to the bottom as they fight the weight of their own armor.
“Dracarys!”
A breath of fire burst out of Silverwing’s mighty jaws, igniting a ship ablaze as she soars above their heads. Screams of agony rip out of the men as they burn and she watches with barely concealed pity as they jump overboard in search of relief- only to drown in the freezing waters.
Vermax soars overhead over her before he dives down, aiming and burning a loan ship fleeing the battle. Cowards. As soon as they start to lose, they run, refusing to face their deaths head on like men should.
An arrow wizzes past her head and she gasps loudly, her head snapping to the side as she dodges the sound. She whines and commands Silverwing to dive, trying to escape the arrows pelting the air around her. It’s terrifying, the constant looming threat of death and fiery blood permeating the air around her. WIth every breath, her chest clenches and eyes water, fear threatening to overwhelm her. She’s never been in a battle like this, never smelled the flesh of burning men.
But she persists.
She burns every ship that dare lay waste to her home and threatens her family, trying to keep track of Moondancer and Vermax at every turn and dive. But her eyes burn and her throat clenches around nothing and she loses them in the fray, confusion and fear forcing her to rely purely on instinct.
Suddenly, the pained scream of a dragon rings out and her heart breaks. Vermax. He screeches and cries, begging for the agony to stop as he slowly gets dragged down to the surface of the water. She can almost hear Jace’s pleas and cries as he descends.
“Silverwing! To Vermax! Defend!”
With a loud, musical scream, Silverwing turns, banking a hard left as she sets her sights on Vermax. A rope has attached itself to his neck, pulling him down slowly into the water, no matter how much Vermax tries to fly away.
“To Aid!”
Right before they sink, Silverwing snaps the rope in half, her talons ripping apart the rope as if it were soft, supple flesh. Vermax trills and soars upwards, his wings and body straining himself to the max as he moves to escape the fight.
“Leave, Jace please,” she whispers, pushing herself tighter against the saddle in a pitiful attempt at dodging more arrows. “Please, I can do this alone. Please!”
But Vermax continues, soaring through the sky and leveling with Silverwing as they descend to attack in tandem. The two dragons work in synch, burning ships and tearing sails as they dive and dodge attacks. Moondancer provides support, burning down ships as they launch grapnel shots continually.
For a moment, victory is imminent, the assailants' ships fleeing in burning around them with only a miniscule amount of enemies left. But a roar rings around, low pitched-and unfamiliar to her as it growls and shutters aggressively. It burns her ships and the screams of her men and enemies sound out as the dragon slaughters them like animals.
It’s rogue- killing both sides with no discrimination.
Sheepstealer.
“Silverwing! To aid! To Sheepstealer!”
Moondancer approaches from behind Sheepstealer, whilst silverwing attacks from the front, almost large enough to take on the rogue dragon alone. But Sheepstealer turns, facing Moondancer head on and forcing her to dive towards, narrowly missing his extended claws. Silverwing claws at his back, barely scratching the surface of his thick, dense hide before he banks, tailing Moondancer with a vengeance.
“Silverwing! Defend, Moondancer!”
Faintly she can hear the screams of Vermax as he approaches, intent on defending Moondancer as well. But Sheepstealer continues, chasing them and nipping at her claws and tail, attempting to kill Baela with every breath it takes. She can faintly see a rider, red and black fabric contrasting off of the back of the dragon, along with thick white hair.
Who would do this?
“Silverwing! Ascend! Kill the rider from above, Silverwing!”
Jace and Vermax follow her and they level head to head, their eyes locking in barely restrained fear. She wants to reach out to him, to take his hands in hers and embrace him like she did so many moons ago under the stars in the Godswood. But fire and blood are her life now, and her dreams continue to remain dreams.
With a nod, they separate, Vermax shifting on the left and Silverwing taking the ride of Sheepstealer, ready to dive in tandem. Vermax dives first, heading straight for the bundle of red. But he stops, evading last second and diving towards the water as Sheepstealer claws at his tail. But Sheepstealer does not stop, and instead he begins to chase Vermax, sending blisteringly hot, orange fire at Jace.
“Dive, Silverwing! To Jace!”
With a scream, Silverwing dives, her claws extended towards the dragon's back. They sink in easily, and Sheepstealer screams, his body rolling as he attempts to dislodge the claws scraping at his spine. But that’s when she sees it, the fearful, tear filled eyes of Rhaena staring at her, begging and pleading for her life.
“Silverwing, release!” She screams when Sheepstealer turns around, his claws aiming at Silverwings unprotected ribs. “Rise, Silverwing! Rhaena, what-”
“I’m sorry! I’m- Sh-Sheepstealer. No! No!”
Arrows pelt the dragon's side and mouth, shallowly burying itself into his hard, armored flesh. But Sheepstealer screams and rises, pulling away from them and fleeing the battle, deciding that the risk is no longer worth the meager reward. She watches in fear as the dragon ascends, disappearing into the canopy of clouds- just as fast as he came.
Rhaena? Why Rhaena?
How did she even claim Sheepstealer and why would she do this? Burn and kill her own men? For what?
A scream of agony breaks her trance and she snaps forward, watch as red, hot blood pours out of Vermax and into the water below. Another grapnel shot has lodged itself in Vermax’s side, pulling him steadily into the water as the dragon quickly weakens from loss of blood. All she can do is watch as the dragon is pulled lower and lower, blood leaching into the water as he hits the icy water.
“Silverwing, faster! Dive!” She unbuckles the saddles, preparing to jump in, before an arrow flies past her head. She slams into the saddle, a shriek escaping her lips as bile rises into her throat. “F-faster, Silverwing!”
Her saddles unlatches with a click and she leans up, her legs and body shaking as she practically stands in her seat.
“Dracarys, Silverwing.”
With those final words, she dives into the pool of ocean just as Jace disappears under the water, her mouth filling with red, metallic dragon and salty water. It’s freezing and her heart skips under the pressure, her body pausing at the shock stabbing through her. But Jace.
Jace.
With a gasp, she dives searching for his body in the shallow depths. Her eyes burn and the water is clouded with the blood of a draining dragon, obscuring her vision. Faintly she sees him, still fighting the clip of his saddle as Vermax strains to swim upwards, to escape the confines of the icy water clawing at his throat. She never has been the best swimmer, but she pushes forward, her lungs burning as her fingers fight the clip locking him into the saddle.
It unclasps with a muffled click and she pulls him up, her body straining under the combined weight of Jace and her clothes. They break the surface together, gasping and clinging to each other as they fight for air. Her eyes burn from the water, but ash soon sills them, before fire and burning flesh fill her nostrils. Exhaustion quickly sets in and she fights to stay afloat, her legs kicking desperately as she clings onto Jacaerys.
Fingers grasp onto her arm as he swims along, clawing at a neighbor plank of wood, holding onto it for their lives. She opens her mouth to scream for Silverwing, begging for her beloved dragon to pluck them from the ocean, but she screams instead.
An arrow whizzes past her head before a dull thud echoes next to her, knocking the air of Jace as it lodges into his back. His fingers slip from her arm and he turns, locking eyes on the ship behind them.
“No! N-no. Silverwing! To aid! Silv-”
Another arrow shrieks through the air, landing in Jace's chest as she screams and begs. Her hands find his chest, pulling him into her as he blocks his body with hers. They cry together, listening to his pained gasps and shutters as his body begins to weaken in her arms.
“N-no! Silverwing! Dracarys!”
Pain flares in her back and she screams again, tucking her head into Jace's neck as an arrow finds its home in her back. White, hot pain sears through her body, and all she feels is pain, all she sees is the blood pooling around them and the light slowly leeching from his eyes. But she stays steadily in front of him, blocking his body with hers.
Her life for his.
That's how this was supposed to go. It wasn’t supposed to be the both of them. He was supposed to live a long happy life with Baela, to become the next king of Westeros. To have children and a family that loved him and followed in his footsteps. He wasn’t supposed to die here.
The screech of a dragon rings out above them and her head lulls back, limply falling into the water as a flash of silver rushes towards the ship. Hot, blue fire escapes Silverwing's jaw, igniting the ship in flames. The men scream and fall into the water, their flesh melting off of their bones as the ship sinks into the water slowly.
Jace whimpers in her ear, straining desperately to speak, “I-I’m s-sorryyy…”
Her head snaps towards his, her violet eyes locking on with his, so brown they’re nearly black. But so, so tired.
“No, Jace! You’re fine… you’re going to be fine! Silverwing, help him! To aid, Silverwing!,” Her hand strains to grab at his shoulder, her body shaking with exertion and she trembles in exhaustion and pain. The arrow moves, shifting in her back and stabbing at her body and she groans loudly, tears streaming down her face in aggressive heaves. “Jace, please! P-please, you will be fine!”
“I… I still lov-”
There’s no end to the sentence. His eyes flutter shut and he goes limp in her hold, weighing her down in the water. She sinks deeper, her head slipping under as water and blood flood into her mouth relentlessly. Jace’s blood. Her blood. She shrieks louder and chokes on it, her lungs and heart clenching as she fights to stay afloat- the driftwood doing little to help.
“Jace! Jace please!” She screams, and water fills her mouth some more. All she tastes is his blood, all she can feel is his body laying dead in her arms. “Ja- Jace! Wake up, please! Silverwing! To me! To Jacaerys!”
The screech of a dragon sounds out above her and her head snaps up, locking with the silvery form of Silverwing descending towards her. It’s instinctual, the way her hand reaches for her dragon, shaking and trembling as she grasps desperately for the saddle. It’s putty in her hands, slipping from her hands as if she were sliding on ice. But she persists, pulling herself onto the leather, screams erupting from her throat as her skin tears from the strain.
Silverwing lifts her up, sinking her body deeper into the water, pulling her away from Jace. She doesn’t relent, pulling and grasping at his body, heaving him onto her saddle. Silently, Silverwing takes off, rushing towards Dragonstone faster than she;s ever flown before. The entire time, her ride holds Jace, screaming into his body, tears and snot trailing down her face as blood trickles down her spine.
It was supposed to be her.
Her life for his.
`
She is silent by the time she arrives back at Dragonstone, the stone is cold underneath her sullied, sodden shoes, the fire does little to ease the pain in her heart and spine. It’s pervasive, a steady pulse of lighting shooting throughout her body.
Strange men filter into her vision, and she faintly hears the screech of a dragon behind her, it’s melodic singing echoing dully in her ears. They take Jace from her arms and she screams, holding desperately onto him- trying to fight their prying hands.
“No, n-NO!”
“My lady, please!”
“J-jace, nO!”
They ignore her pleas and pull her down, but she continues to fight, wriggling in their arms and hitting them with every chance she could see. Silverwing shutters aggressively next to her and, sensing her riders desperation, nips at the nearest queensguard, politely removing him from her rider’s side.
“Get o-off me!” She rips free, falling to her knees as they start to carry Jace away, Baela leading them further into the cavern. She stands and follows, ignoring the pain and pleading of the men around her, pushing their hands away. “J-ja… no!”
The ground approaches her again, her hands and knees scraping loudly as she falls down. But she stands again, her head rushing as she practically crawls her ways towards his body. She can feel their eyes on her, watching her with barely restrained pity.
She collapses again, her eyes lulling closed and she fights to keep them focused. Baela walks towards her slowly, kneeling down in front of her grasping her cheeks with her freezing cold hands.
“Bae…la ... Don-t let them… take……”
All she sees is tears filling Baela’s eyes, before a scream rips through the room, shattering through her skull like a spike of hot iron. It pierces and she groans loudly, pressing her skull to the floor as she wheezes and heaves for breaths.
Rhaenyra continues to scream before she stops, her breath hitching as she whispers- the words barely audible.
“H-he’s alive.”
Black shrouds her vision and she slips under, her heart elating at those words. He is fine. Everything is fine and as it should be. Her life for his.
`
Lights filter through her vision slowly, black figures shift around, blinking in and out of reality as her eyes flicker over the poorly lit room. A gasp escapes her lips before her throat closes around nothing and she chokes, rattling escaping her lips as she choughs and heaves. Fear travels down her spine like electricity, igniting her body in burning hot tingles.
She shoots up, groaning under the pressure and pain in her back.
This isn’t possible- she was dead. She remembers dying, remembers the life leaving her body and her final breath escaping her lips as she clawed at the floor.
“No, my lady, please! You must rest, my lady,” a hand presses down at her shoulder, forcing her back into the soft, warm bed. “The maester states ‘you need to rest’”
“F-fuck the maester,” she coughs into the air before she wheezes and sits back up, “Jacaerys? W-where is he?”
“The prince rests in his chamber…… the maester says he might live- thanks to you, my lady!”
“Bring me to him,” she demands.
The bed groans under her as she shifts and her body fights the movements, but she persists, forcing her legs over the bed. The maid tries to push her down, fussing over her wounds like a mother would her child.
“You can either help me… or I can walk there myself.”
“Yes, my lady- at once.”
The maids hand slip under her shoulders, pulling her up with a soft, strained grasp. The pain is meager compared to her trepidation, compared to the anxiety wracking her body. Everything is still blurry, sounds are muffled, her body weak and cold, but she fights it, her eyes lamely flickering towards the door.
“My lady… you are not dressed properly.. Your-”
“At once.”
They walk slowly, up countless stairs and around countless bends. People stare at them as they walk past, before they rush away- presumably to alert a nearby guard or, perhaps, the Queen herself. It doesn’t deter her from her goal.
Two guards are posted at the door to Jacaerys’ room, tall and imposing as they stare at her approaching. For a moment they stare at her, watching as she drags her legs and clutches at the wall and her maid for support.
They let her in immediately- even if they weren’t supposed to.
“How dare-” Rhaenyra stands and turns, ready to disarm the intrusion before she stops, her mouth dropping open in alarm. “Wha-”
Ignoring everything, she drops the maids arm, rushing over the bed where he lay. A gasps escapes her lips as she stares down at his limp body. His lips are pale and purple, his perfect, white skin marred with bruises and flushed grey with death, hair full and frail. This is not her Jace.
“J-jace… oh..” She turns towards the queen, her lips trembling as eyes shaking as tears threaten to escape them. They mirror each other, two people desperate for him to live, sobbing and clawing at the world to see life rush back into his body. “My queen, I- I’m sorry! I-I….. it all happened so fast.. I- I could not…”
“H-he will live… the maester declared it this morning. The worst has passed.”
A choked sobbed escapes her lips and she leans down, pressing her face into his chest as her body heaves for breaths. It’s a cry of relief, of knowing that all of this would not end in vain. A victory at the cost of his, and how many lives?
“You saved him…” The soft clicks of shoes approach her and a hand presses against her back, cold and shaking against the thin material of her night dress. “ He will live.. T-thank you.”
She turns around, pressing her face in Rhaenyra's chest, clawing at the fabric of her dress to pull the woman closer.
“Wh-where did it all go wrong Rhaenyra? Our family? We fight and maim each other…. like a dog shredding off his own leg to live.”
There’s no answer, but Rhaenyra pulls her closer, wrapping her arms around her half-sister for the first time in her life. They were never allowed to be close, never allowed to bond as siblings should. They were forced at each other’s throat since her birth- a path she refused to follow.
She pulls back and turns back around towards Jacaerys, her fingers seeking his on the bed. They intertwine together, so cold and clammy against her. Silently, she brings them up to her lips, breathing on them slowly to force heat back into the skin.
“I-I was wrong about you….. about the betrothal.”
“Yes.” She presses his hand against her face, leaning into it like he was holding her once again. “ I would like to stay with him… i-if your grace would allow me that pleasure.”
“You are welcome to stay here as long as you like…. Save it doesn’t impede his healing.”
“On my life, it will not, your Grace.”
“Good.”
`
Weeks pass with little to no progress.
The measter returns every day with milk of the poppy, dosing Jacaerys enough to reduce pain to nothing. Life slowly returns to him, his skin becoming flushed with pink as he begins to warm. She reads to him most days. And when she’s not reading, she’s tending to him as if she were a maid, cleaning his skin with a damp cloth and massaging his waning muscles gently.
Two days after the victory at the Gullet, Rhaenyra claimed her throne, storming the castle with her dragons and executing Otto Hightower. It was all of little consequence to her, really. The throne could burst into flames and disappear permanently and she wouldn’t care, as long as Jace would wake up.
“How is he?”
Her head shoots up, locking eyes with Baela as she walks into the room, soft amber fire flickering against her face. A smile flutters across her face and she looks down, her hand tightening around his as she abandons her book.
“He is well. The maester states he should wake soon.” Baela smiles and she continues, “I count down the hours til his eyes flicker open.”
“You are good for him.”
“Hmmm, so are you.”
“No, not like you are,” She sighs and walks closer, her fingers playing with the edge of his blanket. “I do not love him like you do, only as a sister would love her brother. It’s not I who should marry him.”
“That is not for you to decide, Baela.”
“No, it is not…… but… the queen seems to agree with me. The betrothal has been called off.”
“Wha-” Her head shoots up and she locks eyes with Baela, tears immediately pooling in them. “You mean?”
“Yes.”
His hands are warm against her face as she laughs loudly before pressing a lingering kiss to his knuckles. It’s inappropriate to act this way- her septa would be scandaled at her actions for the past two weeks. But she finds herself not caring, choosing instead that her happiness is worth the yelling.
“Thank you, Baela.” There’s no response, only the soft clicking of a door as it closes behind her. “Did you hear that, my love? You need only wake up.”
“Just wake up.”
`
“Your mother is doing good for the realm, Jace. She’s bringing food to the people in need…… far more than Aegon ever did for them.”
Her fingers tighten around his once more before the intertwine and for a moment, she swears she can feel them squeezing back. She’s much too tired right now.
But it squeezes again and she shoots up, her eyes flickering onto his face, desperately searching for life. A soft, warbled groan escapes his lips and she gasps, leaning down as his eyes flutter behind their lids.
“J-jace!?”
He groans again and his eyes flicker open, before shifting closed again. Her lips tremble and her body shakes, her heart clenching as she bites at the skin of her cheeks. They open again, shifting around the room, glassy and unfocused as he blinks endlessly before locking onto her.
There’s no recognition for a moment and her heart breaks, fearing the worst for his mind. But, slowly, he smiles, his lips shakily curling up as his eyes focus. Her fingers tighten against his and he tightens his back, far weaker than hers.
“Jace…..”
Tears fill her eyes and she chokes on air, happiness overwhelming her senses. All she knows is him. And gods, is it beautiful.
“Goodmorning, my love.” She presses a kiss to his knuckles, “there’s so much you missed.”
─ summary: you're not speaking to them. how long before they break?
─ pairing: Gwayne Hightower, Ormund Hightower, Aegon II Targaryen, Aemond Targaryen, Daeron Targaryen, Valarr Targaryen, Jacaerys Velaryon x f!reader
─ content: 18+ MDNI | fluff | a little angst | implied smut | annoying husbands | hardheaded men
─ a/n: i wanted to add onto the original by doing the other AKOTSK/HOTD men. as always, thank you so much for the likes, comments, reblogs, requests, and asks. 🖤
AEGON — Three Days.
The first day he pretends he is not bothered at all. He drinks, he acts out, he stays up the whole night through, making a great show of being a man who doesn't care. By the second day the show is wearing thin, because the truth is that he cares a lot. All he wants is to be near you, but he is stubborn, and some part of him is convinced that you ought to apologize first. By the third day, he cannot bear it another hour. He comes to your room pouting like a scolded child, saying he is sorry, begging you to speak to him again. "I cannot continue!" Dramatic to the very last. You give in, partly because you did miss him, and partly because you would rather not have the whole keep hearing him carrying on like this.
AEMOND — Two Days.
More than anything, Aemond is desperate for love; the love you give him so freely, that no one else ever has. He knows he was wrong. He knows you are right not to speak to him. But he will not say so, because his pride is a vast and immovable thing. He lies in his own bed that second night, cold and alone and sleepless, and decides at last that his pride is not worth this. He rises, sneaks into your chambers and climbs silently into your bed, wrapping his arms around you and pressing a kiss to your forehead. "May I stay?" he asks. He cannot make himself say the words I was wrong, that is not his way, but the look in his eye, and the tears standing in it, say it loudly enough. You nod.
DAERON — Forever, Potentially.
He does not remember the fight, or you telling him to sleep elsewhere. He simply wakes to find you not speaking to him, and being who he is, assumes your love for him has finally run dry, that you no longer have it in you to endure him, and he is crushed by it. But he understands. Someone like you deserves a far better husband than the likes of him. So he resolves to disappear, to stop being a burden, to never trouble you again. It goes on like this for almost a week while you slowly lose your mind, because what in the actual hell is happening?! You confront him at last. He is stunned, he remembers none of it, but more than that, the revelation that you still love him undoes him completely. He pulls you into his arms and kisses you hard. The kind of kiss where his arms are around your waist pulling you impossibly close and your hands are curled in the front of his doublet. You're left so breathless you don't even remember why you were upset. He apologizes, swears he will change, he does not want to live in a world in which you have stopped loving him.
GWAYNE — An Hour.
The sweetest, most devoted husband, completely undone by the barest hint of your displeasure. If you are upset and not speaking to him, he lasts an hour at the very most before he comes to you with a little gift and a very big apology. He is so sorry for being so careless, he will never do such a thing again, never ever, he swears it. And he is so handsome and so sincere as he says it that staying angry is simply not an option available to you. You step into his arms and let him hold you and kiss you.
JACAERYS — Less Than an Hour.
The stress he carries makes him irritable sometimes, careless, a symptom of his youth as much as anything, and he says something snippy when you were only trying to help. He does not even let you leave the room. The words are barely out of his mouth before he regrets them and is apologizing. You try to walk past him and he stops you gently, both hands on your shoulders, his eyes piercing straight through you. He is putting an end to this before it can go anywhere at all. He repeats his apology, his hands sliding from your shoulders down to hold both of yours. You nod, but you need a moment, and he gives it to you. Your silence is the only thing he can think of, occupying him entirely until, an hour later, you come and find him, and climb into his lap, and let him hold you. He will never speak to you that way again.
ORMUND — A Day.
He is a pain in your ass, and he wants to break you. "Hmm. Not speaking to me now?" he says with that infuriating smile the moment he realizes what you are doing. He crowds your space all day, and he is, frankly, impressed by the sheer iron of your resolve. If only all his soldiers possessed your discipline. "How long do you imagine this can continue? You must speak to me sooner or later." After a full day of it, you do indeed snap. "Seven hells, do you ever stop talking?!" You storm out of the room, slamming the door behind you. He will not tolerate that in his house; he follows you, his fury matching your own, as he pulls you into the bedchamber. What follows is a fight indeed, a battle for dominance, each of you determined to have the upper hand. You win.
VALARR — Until Supper.
You and Valarr are in the middle of a thunderous fight, the first of your marriage. You and he on opposite sides of the room, nothing but tension and frigid air between you, when you decide to stop speaking to him altogether. He wants to fix this, but he also does not think hashing it out in the heat of the moment is particularly productive,not while you are both still upset. He lets you be silent, but you do not get to be angry at him all day. He comes to dress for supper and makes it clear he means to talk about it now, and he apologizes thoroughly for his part in it. It is difficult to maintain anger against someone so clearheaded. You apologize, forgive him, and ask him to help you with your dress. He decides to skip supper in favor of eating something else entirely.
“Their scales are rough – almost like tree bark. If you manage to retrieve one it's sharp as well, enough to where it could be repurposed into a blade.”
Jace speaks of Dragons as if he knows them. As if he has physically run his fingertips along their scales, as if he has slid down them on his way back to the ground. As if he has felt the flames produced from them on his very skin, and smelt like cinders after a long flight.
There's only one remaining family with Dragons though. And they do not reside anywhere in Essos. In fact – they've personally terrorized your people in the blank lands. Daemon Targaryen did, upon his mount Caraxes.
Was this.. Prince Jacaerys? You suppose you could shorten it to Jace, but the commonfolk would never risk disrespecting a child of the crown in such a way. And his hair was different from a Targaryen’s.
Then again you'd heard the stories of how Rhaenyra Targaryen birthed bastards. Of how her three oldest children all had brown hair despite both her and her husband's silvery gold strands.
Nonetheless Prince Jacaerys died in the battle of the Gullet. His dragon shot down into the sea and the Prince assaulted with Triarchy arrows.
That was how you found him, was it not? Two arrows lodged deep into his shoulder and a bolt of your own people's creation secured in the muscles of his neck.
The realization does not hit you like a wall. Not like a slap, or a tidal wave. It reaches you with a primal sense of dread; one that sends ice through your veins and makes it difficult to breathe. As if he was a predator, simply biding his time with the prey.
Your hand tightens around Jace's – Prince Jacaerys’ – arm before realizing your mistake. This is not a friend, a companion, someone you could be besotted with.
This was the enemy.
One that you wrapped in your silks.
One that slept in your walls. Who has slept in your very own bed.
One that you revived because you could not quench your own curiosity.
Your hand slips from its perch at the acceptance of these facts. Your face falls into a carefully crafted picture of indifference as your steps falter.
Jace – Prince Jacaerys, not Jace, Jace would not have deceived you in such a way – notices the second that your hand begins to move. His eyes dart to yours and he's able to watch with startling attention as you school your expression.
“What is it?” Jace's voice is tight and low, reserved only for you. His eyes are frantic, searching the area for what could have possibly caused you such distress.
You don't respond automatically and your eyes aren't fixed on someone or something in the distance. So Jace raises a palm to your cheek, tilting your head so you're forced to gaze upon him.
“What is wrong?”
“You – you are a Targaryen.” The words tear through your vocal chords. They bring you a physical pain from the center of your lungs all the way to the tip of your tongue. Despite that, they're quiet – well aware of what would befall Jace if anyone were to find out.
Time seems to freeze for a bit.
A few moments that may seem sweet to outsiders. A young couple so lost in each other that they cannot be bothered to move from the center of the market. Trying to avoid public indecency, but too entranced with another to step away.
You know you should kill him, or more likely, have him killed. Should return him to his previous state. Bolt through his neck and all. His family has caused your people much distress. Your own father fights against his parents and grandsire.
Jacaerys Velaryon x sister!reader - House of the Dragon
Summary: After years away Jacaerys comes home to King's Landing to join the realm in celebrating his sister's eighteenth name day. While watching lords swarm her and vie for her hand, he realises it should've always been him.
Warnings: 18+ SMUT no war au, EVENTUAL SMUT, targcest (reader is Daemon and Rhaenyra's daughter), lovemaking in the sky (srry Vermax), p in v, kinda handjob/fingering (both rec), manhandling, implied loss of virginity, kinda naive/innocent reader, alcohol
A/N: Rhaenyra is queen and they're all aged up -> reader is 18, Jace is unspecified but older. (i saw someone have a headcanon abt fucking on dragon back but i cant remember who, but its out there somewhere trust)
MASTERLIST - REQUESTS (open) - WC: 5.4k
The castle has never been quiet on your name day.
From the moment the sun rises over Blackwater Bay the Red Keep hums with the kind of life that belongs only to celebrations.
Servants weave through its corridors, balancing polished silver and bolts of embroidered silk, cooks bark orders from kitchens already thick with the scent of roasting meats and sweet pastries, and somewhere below your window a quartet of musicians have spent the better part of an hour arguing over the same melody.
The sound drifts through the open casement in uneven bursts, carried on the warm summer breeze before it dissolves into the cries of gulls circling the harbour.
It is all for you.
Eighteen.
The number sits strangely in your mind. Lords who once ruffled your hair now bow a fraction lower. Ladies who used to coo at you now ask after your gowns and favourite jewels. Every smile feels just a little too measured, every compliment just a little too deliberate.
But you don't care, because all you're thinking about is Jacaerys.
And he is late.
Well, not truly. The sun has scarcely reached its highest point and no one expected him before midday, but that does little to quiet the restless anticipation thrumming beneath your skin.
It has been nearly two years.
At first the months passed quickly enough. Letters arrived regularly, each bearing your eldest brother's unmistakably careful hand, filled with dutiful accounts of the Riverlands, the Vale, or White Harbour. Tucked inside each letter had been some little trinket that reminded him of you; polished amber gathered along the eastern coast, a tiny wolf carved from pale weirwood by a Northern craftsman, a silver hairpin so delicately wrought that you had been terrified of wearing it the first time.
The gifts had never mattered.
You would have traded every last one simply to hear him laugh across the training yard again.
"Still waiting?"
The familiar voice draws your attention from the road.
Your mother stands a few paces behind you, sunlight catching in the silver-gold of her hair until it almost seems to glow. "I am merely enjoying the view," you reply, with all the dignity you can manage.
Rhaenyra arches a brow. "The view of the Kingsroad?"
"It is a very fine road."
She laughs then, the sound soft and knowing. "You have been watching that very fine road since dawn."
You sigh dramatically, resting your chin upon folded arms. "He promised."
"And Jacaerys has never broken a promise to you."
"No," you admit, a smile tugging at your lips despite yourself. "He has not."
Then, finally, a horn sounds somewhere below.
The guards upon the gatehouse shift, peering out across the road before one suddenly straightens.
"Dragon!"
Every head upon the walls turns skyward.
Your heart leaps into your throat before your eyes have even found him.
Vermax appears, cutting through brilliant blue with powerful, measured strokes of emerald wings. Sunlight catches across his scales, throwing flashes of bronze and green over the city below as he wheels above the Red Keep. He is larger than you remember.
So is the rider upon his back.
"Gods be good," Rhaenyra murmurs behind you, though there is laughter in her voice already. You are halfway down the nearest staircase before she can finish the sentence.
The courtyard erupts into motion as Vermax settles with a thunderous beat of wings, servants scattering instinctively while guards struggle to look composed in the face of a dragon. Dust billows across the flagstones, catching in your skirts as you weave between startled courtiers, heedless of the calls following after you.
Jace has barely swung one leg over the saddle when he hears his name, he turns just in time to see a blur of deep crimson silk racing across the courtyard.
You collide with him hard enough to force him back a step.
The laugh leaves him before he can stop it.
Strong hands find your waist out of pure instinct, lifting you clean from the ground as though no time has passed at all, as though you are still the little girl forever launching yourself at him from staircases and behind pillars in hopes of catching him unaware.
Your feet dangle a good foot above the flagstones, your arms looped comfortably around his shoulders.
"You'll knock me over one day," he says, laughter still colouring every word.
Up close he looks older. The softness that once lingered around his face has sharpened into something unmistakably princely, the line of his jaw more defined beneath the dust of travel, his hair longer than before where the sea wind has escaped the leather tie at the nape of his neck.
He lowers you carefully back onto your feet.
Both hands rise to cradle your face with easy affection, his thumbs brushing absent-mindedly against your cheeks.
His expression softens. "You've grown."
"So have you."
A quiet laugh escapes him.
"I should hope so."
Before you can answer, he bends to press a familiar kiss against your forehead. You simply grin and lean briefly into the touch before stepping back, and he slings an arm around your shoulders, leading you back inside.
Neither of you notices Prince Daemon watching from the gallery above, and neither of you notices the faintest curve beginning at the corner of his mouth.
By the time the sun has slipped beneath the horizon the Great Hall glows beneath a hundred candles.
Music spills from the gallery above in soft, lilting melodies. Gold catches in polished plates, jewelled collars and the circlets worn by lords who have travelled from every corner of the realm to honour the queen's youngest daughter.
Jace has attended more feasts than he can remember.
They have blurred together over the years into a procession of banners and vows, polite smiles and carefully chosen words, each hall distinguished only by the sigil hanging above the high table.
Tonight should be no different.
Instead, he finds himself searching for you before he has even crossed the threshold.
You stand near the queen's chair while one of the ladies fusses with the sleeve of your gown, silver thread shimmering against deep burgundy velvet. Your hair has been left half unbound, pale waves falling over your shoulders in the old Valyrian fashion, catching the candlelight each time you laugh at something Baela says beside you.
You have always laughed with your whole face. That, at least, has not changed.
The feast begins in earnest soon after.
Your mother rises to speak, her words carrying easily across the hall as she welcomes those who have come to celebrate your name day. You sit at her right hand, smiling with the restrained grace expected of a princess, though every now and then your attention wanders, your eyes finding Jace somewhere further down the table.
Each time they do, you smile exactly as you always have.
Lord Rowan's youngest son cannot be much older than five-and-twenty.
Jace remembers meeting him briefly in the Reach; a courteous enough man with an easy smile and an unfortunate tendency to speak longer than necessary. Now he watches as the knight bows over your hand with every appearance of propriety, offering some finely wrapped gift that earns a laugh from you.
You thank him warmly.
The young lord moves away eventually, replaced almost immediately by another.
Then another.
A Lannister cousin. The heir to a minor Crownlands house. A knight from Driftmark whose name escapes him entirely.
Each offers congratulations and smiles, looking at you with unmistakable admiration. It is perfectly reasonable, you are a princess. after all, one who has just turned eighteen.
You are also beautiful, a treacherous corner of Jace's mind supplies.
"They are circling already." Rhaena speaks softly across the table, amusement dancing in her eyes as she follows his line of sight.
Jace frowns. "What do you mean?"
"The suitors." He says nothing. "The realm has been waiting for this birthday almost as eagerly as she has."
In that moment, Jace understands has been absent too long, and the little girl forever racing after him through the corridors of Dragonstone no longer exists outside his memory.
The woman seated at the queen's right hand does.
Some distant part of him, the dutiful prince who has spent years weighing every decision against the good of the realm, should perhaps be appalled by what has just taken root in his mind.
Instead, he is struck only by how little it surprises him.
'If a husband is to stand beside you one day... why should it be anyone but me?'
The feast dwindles by degrees.
One by one the visiting lords excuse themselves. The Great Hall grows quieter with every passing hour until only family and the queen's closest councillors remain, lingering more from habit than obligation.
Jace has scarcely taken three steps beyond the hall when Ser Lorent inclines his head.
"The Queen requests your presence, my prince."
The solar is warm despite the hour, lit by a scattering of candles that throw long shadows across maps and parchment left strewn over the great table. His mother stands beside the open window overlooking the bay, one hand resting against the carved stone.
Daemon lounges opposite her with infuriating ease, a goblet balanced loosely between his fingers.
Neither appears surprised to see him.
"You wished to see me?"
"I did." She gestures for him to come closer. "We were discussing your sister."
"Has something happened?"
"No," Daemon answers before Rhaenyra can speak. "Nothing has happened."
"Yet," Rhaenyra mutters.
Daemon ignores her. "Your sister is eighteen."
"I am aware."
"A great many others are as well."
Jace says nothing.
"The feast made that abundantly clear. It also made clear it is time we considered suitable matches."
Jace nods once. Rhaenyra watches him closely. "So," she says gently, "what would you advise?"
"My advice?"
"You have travelled more of the realm than either of us these past years. You know its young heirs better than most."
Jace considers it carefully, because that is what is expected of him, because he has spent his whole life learning how to answer as the heir before he ever remembers how to answer as himself.
"There are worthy men," he finally scrapes out. Rhaenyra gives a small nod as though she had expected nothing less.
Jace continues, "The son of House Rowan conducted himself well in the Reach. The Redwynes would strengthen our position in the south. The Celtigars remain loyal."
At that, Daemon exhales through his nose with open disdain, swirling the wine lazily around his cup.
“Boring.”
Jace turns to him, frowning. “Excuse me?”
“You are answering as the heir,” Daemon says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. “I am asking the man.”
He looks between his mother and Daemon, trying to decide whether he has missed some crucial piece of context, and finds only that strange, infuriating look on Daemon’s face.
“What exactly are you asking me?” Jace says at last.
Daemon studies him for a long moment. "Which of those boys would you choose for her?"
Jace exhales quietly. "I could not say."
"You have met most of them."
"I know them as lords."
Daemon leans back. "But not well enough to know which one deserves to share her bed."
The words strike the room like a thrown dagger. Rhaenyra closes her eyes for a brief, pained moment, as though she can already feel the shape of the disaster coming and would very much like to stop it before it begins.
“Daemon...”
“What?” he asks mildly, with all the innocence of a man who has never once been innocent in his life. “The point of a political match is to produce heirs, and that is generally how marriages produce heirs.”
Jace says nothing.
Daemon watches him for another long moment, “I do not believe you could bear it,” he says at last.
The silence deepens.
“I beg your pardon?” Jace manages, barely.
“I do not believe,” Daemon repeats, his voice calm and level, “that you could bear another man laying hands upon her.”
Rhaenyra straightens at once. “Daemon.”
“I do not believe you could bear another man kissing her.”
“Enough.”
“I do not believe you could bear watching her swell with another man’s children.”
Jace feels the blood drain from his face, every muscle in him going rigid as if he has been struck.
“And I certainly do not believe,” he continues, his tone infuriatingly calm, “that you could stomach another man teaching her what it is to be loved.”
“Daemon.”
Rhaenyra’s voice is sharper now, edged with warning, but the prince merely lifts one hand in a gesture that is almost dismissive, never once taking his eyes from Jace.
“Am I wrong?”
Jace opens his mouth but nothing comes. Because the horror of it is not that Daemon has imagined such things, it is that Jace has.
Daemon’s mouth curves, just slightly.
“I...” Jace begins, and then abandons the sentence entirely, because there is no sentence that can save him now.
“You love her.”
It is not a question.
“You are so thoroughly, catastrophically in love with her that you have spent an entire evening glaring at boys who merely smiled in her general direction.”
Finally Rhaenyra rounds on him. “You cannot simply accuse our son of being in love with his sister.”
Jace would gladly vanish into the stone floor if the gods would be so merciful. Instead he stands rooted where he is while the two most formidable people in the realm discuss him as though he were not present.
“He is miserable,” Daemon says, finally turning his head to look at her. “Because half the realm has suddenly decided my daughter is fit to wed.”
Rhaenyra folds her arms more tightly. “And that does not concern you?”
“Of course it concerns me, hence why we are having this conversation.”
She stares at him in open disbelief. “You cannot seriously believe this is the best solution.”
Daemon raises an eyebrow. “Find me a better man.”
“The point is not whether he is a good man.”
“No?”
He waits. She opens her mouth, clearly intending to explain, and then stops, because whatever argument she had prepared has already begun to collapse under the weight of its own hypocrisy.
“You married your uncle.”
Rhaenyra points a finger at him. “That is entirely beside the point.”
Jace, who has thus far wished for nothing more than escape, finally exhales, very quietly, and when both of them turn to him he feels the full weight of their attention settle over him.
“With respect, Mother...” he says, and both of them look at him with identical expressions of wary expectation. He swallows, then presses on before he can lose his nerve. “...he does have you there.”
Rhaenyra blinks. “You are taking his side?”
“I am merely observing...” The faintest smile threatens despite himself, because if he does not laugh he may very well scream. “...that you did, in fact, marry your uncle.”
The silence that follows is brief, but heavy in a way that feels almost ceremonial, as though something unseen has just shifted its weight in the room and no one is yet willing to acknowledge it.
Rhaenyra is the first to recover.
“This is not something decided in a solar with three people and a bottle of wine.”
Jace shifts slightly where he stands, still trying to understand how he has become the subject of something that feels suspiciously like a verdict. “Mother,” he begins cautiously, “if this is about-”
“It is about nothing yet,” Rhaenyra cuts in quickly, sharper than intended, then exhales and forces her tone back down. “It is about considering what is best for her future.”
Daemon makes a quiet sound of amusement, leaning back in his chair as if the entire matter has already concluded and he is simply waiting for the rest of them to catch up.
“Then consider it done. I am her father and I have found a match for her.”
Rhaenyra’s gaze snaps to him. “Excuse me?”
“You asked for a good man,” Daemon says, as though repeating something painfully obvious.
“You cannot simply decide this,” Rhaenyra says, though even she sounds less certain than before.
“I can,” Daemon replies. “And I have.”
A beat.
Then, almost lazily, he adds, “Unless you intend to send her to some Reachling with soft hands and softer loyalties.”
Rhaenyra’s expression hardens. “Do not reduce this to-”
“To what?” Daemon interrupts, finally straightening in his chair. The amusement in him sharpens now, not into anger, but something more focused. “Politics? That is what you are trying to do. I am simply being honest about it. She is our daughter, Rhaenyra.”
Silence again.
He walks a few steps toward the window, looking out over the Blackwater as if the conversation has already moved past him.
“She stays within the family,” he says casually, almost conversationally, as though discussing ship routes. “She stays where she is known. Where she is protected. Where she is not bartered to men who would mistake her for an opportunity.”
Jace clears his throat once.
“If I may-”
“No,” both of them say at once.
He stops.
Daemon turns slightly, looking at him now with something like faint approval.
“You will marry her,” he says simply.
Jace looks at him with wide eyes, “Are you being serious?”
Rhaenyra closes her eyes again, slower this time, as though bracing for impact.
“I refuse to send my daughter away,” Daemon states. His gaze shifts briefly to Jace, sharp and unblinking.
The room goes still.
Jace should object. He should say something about choice, about propriety, about the absurdity of making such decisions in this manner.
“She does not even know we are having this conversation.”
Daemon’s smile returns, slow and infuriatingly certain.
“No,” he agrees. “She does not. And you will tell her, Jacaerys. Better you than either of us."
“And if she refuses?”
“She won't.”
Vermax takes to the sky just after dawn, when the castle is still half-swallowed in morning mist and the water below reflects a pale gold.
The world feels quieter from above, stretched thin and distant, as though all the noise of court and council has been left behind somewhere on the stone below.
You do not question it when Jace comes for you. You never have.
He arrives without ceremony in the inner courtyard where the dragonkeepers have already prepared Vermax for flight.
“You want to go flying?” He asks simply, as if it is an ordinary thing to offer a princess on the morning after her name day feast.
Your smile comes easily. “I always want to go flying.”
That earns the faintest curve of his mouth. He helps you mount with practised ease, hands steady at your waist as you swing your leg over Vermax’s neck.
Then he climbs up behind you.
The moment he settles into place, the world shifts; you can't help but be aware of the warmth at your back, the solid presence of him there, closer than anyone else has ever been permitted to be in this way. One arm reaches around you instinctively to secure the reins while the other steadies you at your side, palm firm against your ribs.
“You are sitting differently,” you note, turning your head slightly to glance at him.
His expression is unreadable for a moment, then softens. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
Here, there is nothing between you but wind and sky and the steady rise and fall of Vermax’s wings beneath you.
He gives the command, and Vermax launches forward.
The world slowly drops away.
Wind tears at your hair, pulling laughter from your chest without permission, and you lean instinctively into Jace’s grip as Vermax climbs higher, circling the coast before cutting out over open water.
His arm tightens around you without hesitation.
Somewhere behind you, you feel rather than see him adjust his hold, pulling you slightly closer against him as the wind sharpens at altitude. It is automatic, the same instinct that has always placed him between you and anything that might hurt you.
You tilt your head back slightly, just enough to speak over the rush of air. “I like it when you come home,” you admit, without thinking much of it. “Everything feels louder when you are not here.”
You do not see the way his eyes linger on you again. The way they soften in a manner that has nothing to do with duty.
You are laughing at something Vermax does mid-turn when he speaks.
“I am not leaving again.”
The words take a moment to settle. You glance over your shoulder slightly, confused. “What do you mean?”
There is a pause so brief you almost miss it. “They have decided something.”
That makes you laugh lightly. “Have they?”
“Yes.” The tone is careful now, though still steady.
You frown slightly. “What sort of something?” The wind howls.
“You are to be married.”
For a moment, there is only the feel of him behind you, the steady beat of Vermax’s wings, and the distant horizon that suddenly feels much further away than it did a moment ago.
You blink. “...What do you mean?”
“It has been agreed,” he says more softly. “Between our mother and Daemon.”
Your grip on the reins tightens slightly, though Vermax does not react. “Oh,” you say slowly, as if testing the shape of the word. “That is… sudden.”
“It is.”
You turn your head further now, trying to see his face properly, though the angle is awkward with the wind pulling at you. “And who-”
You stop. Because when his jaw tightens you realise you already know.
“Jace,” you say carefully. He doesn't answer, just stares ahead. "Jace. Are we to be married?"
"...Yes."
You turn fully now as much as the space allows, looking at him properly for the first time.
“You are very composed about this,” you say, attempting levity and failing to find it entirely.
His mouth twitches, almost a smile. “I had some time to think.”
The wind pulls at you again, but he shifts without thinking, bringing you closer still until there is barely any space between you at all. You are suddenly acutely aware of it; of the way his arm anchors you, of the warmth at your back, of the steady, unyielding presence of him in a place where there is nothing else to hold onto.
You swallow. “And what do you think?” you ask.
He finally looks at you. “That I would not allow anyone else to do this,” he says quietly.
Something in your chest tightens. “Do what?”
“I would never allow anyone else to stand where I stand.”
Vermax banks sharply beneath you; it sends you forward, straight into him. His arm tightens instantly, catching you before you can even think to steady yourself, and for a moment you are completely held there against him, suspended between sky and breath.
You search his face for something. Uncertainty? Jest? Anything that might soften what he has just said into something easier to carry. You find none.
Your hand rises without thinking, resting lightly against the side of his face. His breath catches, not sharply, but enough.
“Jace,” you say, and his name feels different in your mouth now. He does not answer.
For a heartbeat, there is nothing but the rush of wind and the distant cry of the sea far below.
Then he is kissing you.
Not like something uncertain or newly discovered, but like something that has finally been allowed to exist.
His hand tightens at your waist, suddenly far too close in a way neither of you can undo.
You make a small sound against his mouth, half surprise, half something you don’t yet have a name for, and it seems to undo whatever careful restraint he has been holding onto.
The arm around you shifts, pulling you back against him with a controlled urgency that sends your breath catching, your fingers instinctively curling into the front of his riding leathers as if that alone can keep you anchored.
Vermax turns beneath you and the world tilts, but Jace does not let you fall.
When you finally break just enough to breathe, it is only by a fraction, your forehead still close to his, your breath mingling with his in the cold air.
You look at him then, properly, and something in your expression seems to undo him more than the kiss itself ever could.
“This is…” you start, but the words fail you.
His thumb brushes lightly against your side where he still holds you.
“I know,” he says quietly.
The wind tears past again, colder now against your flushed skin, and you should pull away, should think, should question, should make sense of any of this.
You don't.
Instead he leans in again, lips claiming yours with a hunger that has been building since the moment he returned days ago. His mouth hot and insistent against your own.
The kiss deepens instantly, his tongue slides against the seam of your lips before you part them, letting him set the pace, and the one sets is perfect, a desperate rhythm that sends sparks racing through you.
Your fingers tangle in his dark curls, pulling him closer as his hands roam your body with possessive certainty, one sliding up to cup your breast through the thin fabric of your riding leathers while the other grips your hip, anchoring you against him on Vermax's broad back.
The dragon soars higher, the sea a glittering expanse far below, but all you can feel is the hard press of Jace's body.
You moan into the kiss, the sound swallowed by the rushing air and the steady beat of wings, as Jace shifts you effortlessly onto his lap, your legs straddling his.
His tongue delves deeper, exploring every inch of your mouth with an intensity that makes warmth gather in your belly, wetness already soaking your undergarments.
"You know," he breathes against your lips, his voice rough, "you're mine now. Always have been."
You let him move you as he pleases, but soon you can feel the way his cock strains against his breeches, thick and insistent against your thigh.
"Are you alright?"
You can only nod shakily, letting your head find the hollow of his shoulder.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Jace."
His hand slips between your bodies, fingers deftly undoing laces to find your slick folds, stroking you slow and gathering your wetness on his fingers.
Then he reaches to free himself, hot and heavy as you wrap your fingers around him. He covers your hand with his own, guiding your hand to stroke him slowly.
"We should probably stop." he grits out.
You whine in response, "No, Jace please. I don't want to stop."
Jace lifts you higher, positioning the head of his cock at your entrance.
"You tell me if that changes, okay."
"Yes."
"Promise me." He tilts your head towards him, holding your eyes with his own.
"I promise." With that he thrusts upward in one smooth motion, burying himself deep inside you with a groan that vibrates through his chest into yours.
The fullness stretches you perfectly, every ridge and vein of him dragging against your inner walls as he begins to move.
"Gods you're tight." He grunts, his hands gripping to guide your hips in a grinding rhythm that matches the dragon's powerful wingbeats.
Pleasure coils tight in your core, building with each thrust, the wind caressing your exposed skin where leathers have been shoved aside, breasts pressed to his chest, nipples hard from the chill and his touch.
His mouth finds yours again, the kiss messy and passionate, tongues tangling as he fucks into you over and over.
You can feel it — his claim, his love, his protection — in every thrust.
He feels you start to tighten around him, one hand fisting your hair to make you look at him. His eyes are wild, hair messed by wind and jaw clenched to tight its a wonder its not cracked.
"Not yet my love. Hold on for me."
"I cannot, Jace." You gasp, hand flying to his shoulder in desperation.
"Yes, you can." He coos, pulling your face up to meet his in another kiss, this one softer, coaxing you to match him as his thrusts grew harsher, rougher.
Only then does his hand move from your hair, snaking down to find where your bodies are joined. He rubs tight, deliberate circles that have you arching into him.
"Jace, please, it's too much."
"Okay, you can come now."
You do, raw ecstasy filling your body as you shatter around him, crying out his name into the endless sky.
Your eyes shut, body going completely slack against his for the trembling that claims you. Your legs are shaking where they're slotted around his hips.
"Good girl, just like that. Let me take care of you." He says as his thrusts get harder, his hands now assisting to pull you down to meet them.
Then, his pace grows erratic, and you can feel his breathing is more laboured as it hits your temple.
With one final thrust he goes rigid, following you over the edge, pulsing hot and deep within you. His arms wrap around you, the world reduced to the two of you and the endless blue above the waves.
Jace is the first to move.
It is small at first, almost hesitant, as if he is afraid that shifting even slightly might undo something irreparable.
His hand, which had been steady at your waist only moments ago, loosens just enough for him to adjust you more carefully against him, pulling off his cloak and draping it around your shoulders with a gentleness that feels entirely at odds with the fact that you are both still several thousand feet and he's still inside you.
“You’re cold,” he says, though it sounds more like something he needs to believe than something he has observed.
“I’m fine,” you reply automatically.
He doesn’t look reassured.
Instead, he shifts again, this time lifting you off him with a hiss and placing you in front of him on the saddle again.
“You didn’t have to-” he starts.
You tilt your head slightly. “Have to what?”
The words seem to catch somewhere behind his teeth, like everything he might say is either too much or not enough.
“Do that,” he settles on finally, quieter now. “Like that.”
You blink at him, trying to follow. “Jace.”
His jaw tightens slightly at the sound of his name, but he doesn’t look away.
“It should not have been like that,” he says, and there is something carefully restrained in his voice now, something that feels like it has been pushed down hard. “Your first time should have been-” He exhales through his nose, frustrated with himself more than anything else. “Well, for starters, not in the sky.”
For a moment, you just stare at him. “You think I am going to complain because it was in the sky?”
“I am serious,” he says.
“I know you are,” you reply, smiling faintly. “That’s the problem.”
He blinks once.
You shift slightly in his arms so you can see his face more clearly, even as Vermax continues his smooth, unbothered flight beneath you both.
“I do not need it to be… whatever you are imagining it should have been,” you continue, voice softening now, grounding into something steadier. “I did not think about it being in a bed or a room or anywhere else."
"You must've had some fantasy, something you hoped for or wanted from it." He presses, seemingly not content with your reassurance.
"Jacaerys, I wanted it to be you.”
That quiets him completely.
“That is not-” he starts. “It is,” you interrupt gently.
A pause.
Then, quieter, almost teasing now that you have his full attention again, “Besides, I think I will remember this more than if it had been in a bed.”
Something like a reluctant sound leaves him, half laugh and half exhale, and the tension in his shoulders eases just a fraction.
“You are certain?” he asks after a moment.
"Of course."
IYou lean back into him properly, letting the wind rush past as Vermax carries you both forward, the world still impossibly wide beneath you and forever changed.
hes so sweet ik it (but also lowkey freaky) also I knowww people have mixed feeling abt targcest and im sorry but it felt sooo perfect for this fic
I never thought I'd post anything let alone multiple chapters. I was crying rivers last week and I did in fact not like Jace's death. Istg I was crying on the train.
Anyways I decided to change some stuff so hope yall like it :)
Contains: swearing, death, blood, fighting, eventual smut? If it's requested, happy ending. Honestly I don't even know how to use warnings I don't think it's needed for people who watched GOT or HOTD. Also it's kinda rushed so not so many details, the first chapters are honestly just an introduction to Maera, I don't even know how long this fanfic will be so please do not judge me.
A little short chapter for more context :D
Happy reading!! :)
————————————————————————————
“Well this is just disappointing.”
Maera winced as Daemon shoved his elbow into her side. The family stood before the gates of the Red Keep, yet not a single person had come to greet or welcome them.
“I did not miss the smell,” Luke whined.
“Nor the people,” Jace added.
“Off with you three. I want to see your grandfather,” Rhaenyra said, shooing them away before she and Daemon continued inside.
“Come on, then,” Maera sighed, dragging the two brothers along with her.
They wandered through the castle grounds until they found themselves near the training yard. The sharp clash of steel echoed through the air, drawing her attention. Looking over, she spotted Ser Criston Cole sparring with—
“Aemond!”
A grin instantly spread across her face.
At the sound of his name, the prince—no longer truly a boy—halted mid-strike. He had barely begun to turn around before a body collided with him and wrapped itself around him.
His instincts almost had him shoving the attacker away, but the moment he caught sight of the familiar mixture of silver and brown hair, he knew exactly who would dare launch herself at him so recklessly.
“My dear Maera.”
A small smile tugged at his lips as he finally returned the embrace.
His gaze drifted toward the two brothers standing nearby, and his arms tightened slightly around her as he shot them a smug smirk.
“Let me look at you.”
Pulling back, he gently cupped her cheeks. This time, his smile was genuine. “You grow more beautiful every day, cousin. It should be studied.”
“Oh, stop it.”
Laughing, she pushed his face away before turning toward Criston.
“Criston.”
She dipped her head politely. The knight smiled and returned the gesture.
“My lady, Prince Aemond does not jest. Your beauty is becoming quite unfair.” Maera rolled her eyes, though amusement danced across her features.
Just as she was about to reply, the gates suddenly flew open. Ser Vaemond entered with his guards in tow.
His eyes immediately landed on her stepbrothers, and a look of unmistakable disdain crossed his face as he strode past them. Maera narrowed her eyes and stepped closer to Aemond.
“I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, never taking her eyes off his retreating figure.
Aemond chuckled.
“Still as sassy as ever.”
⸻
The two sides of the family stood opposite one another in the throne room. Maera remained beside her father, though her gaze briefly wandered to Aegon and Helaena.
She had missed them dearly.
Aegon caught her eye and smirked before subtly nodding his head.
Later.
The message was clear enough.
Maera fought back a smile and nodded in return.
Now was not the time for reunions.
Before Vaemond could continue his grand display of arrogance, the massive doors groaned open. The room fell silent.
King Viserys entered.
Maera nearly gasped.
She knew her uncle had been suffering, but seeing him now, frail, weakened, barely able to walk, was heartbreaking.
For a moment, she almost rushed forward to help him. Daemon was faster.
Her father stepped forward and guided Viserys to the Iron Throne.
“I must admit…” the king began, breathing heavily. “My confusion.”
The room listened in silence.
“I do not understand why petitions are being heard over a settled succession.” He paused to catch his breath.
“The only one present… who might offer keener insight into Lord Corlys’s wishes… is Princess Rhaenys.” Maera smiled faintly as Rhaenys stepped forward.
“Indeed, Your Grace.”
Rhaenys carried herself with her usual grace and authority. “It was always my husband’s wish that Driftmark pass through Ser Laenor to his true-born son, Lucerys Velaryon. His mind never changed, nor did my support of him.”
She glanced toward Rhaenyra.
“As a matter of fact, Princess Rhaenyra has informed me of her desire to wed her sons, Jace and Luke, to Lord Corlys’s granddaughters, Baela and Rhaena. A proposal to which I wholeheartedly agree.”
Maera’s heart dropped.
Jace was to marry Baela?
The realization struck her harder than she expected.
Why did that hurt?
Viserys nodded.
“Well… the matter is settled.”
He sighed. “Again.”
“I hereby reaffirm Prince Lucerys Velaryon as heir to Driftmark, the Driftwood Throne, and the title of Lord of the Tides.” Maera thought that would finally be the end of it. Perhaps now she could spend time with Aegon and Helaena.
Perhaps now everyone could move on.
Unfortunately, Vaemond seemed incapable of silence.
“You break law and centuries of tradition to install your daughter as heir,” he spat. “Yet you dare tell me who deserves to inherit the name Velaryon? No. I will not allow it.”
This motherfucker.
“Allow it?” Viserys retorted. “Do not forget yourself, Vaemond.”
“That is no true Velaryon. And certainly no nephew of mine.”
He simply would not stop.
Rhaenyra attempted to send her children from the room, but Vaemond continued.
“You may run your house as you see fit, but you will not decide the future of mine.” His voice rose.
“My house survived the Doom and a thousand tribulations besides, and gods be damned, I will not see it ended on account of this—”
“Say it.”
Daemon’s voice cut through the room like a blade.
Vaemond turned.
“Her children are bastards.”
The room froze.
“And she…”
A cruel smile spread across his face.
“…is a whore.”
Maera saw red. Gasps erupted around the throne room. Viserys shook with fury.
“I will have your tongue for that.”
Maera’s eyes immediately found Daemon’s.
She did not need words. Only permission.
Her father gave the smallest nod, and that was all she needed.
Moving without hesitation, she seized Dark Sister from Daemon’s side and strode toward Vaemond. The man was still shouting when she stepped behind him.
One clean strike.
The blade flashed through the air.
Chaos erupted.
Cries rang throughout the throne room as Vaemond’s body collapsed to the floor as blood splattered across Maera’s dress.
For a moment, silence followed.
Then she calmly lowered the sword.
“He can keep his tongue.”
The room stared.
“Disarm her!” someone shouted.
“No need.”
Maera smiled pleasantly as she wiped the blade clean and returned it to her father. Daemon looked as though he had never been prouder. The grin on his face was almost frightening.
Unfortunately, both of their smiles vanished moments later when Viserys suddenly groaned in pain.
The king doubled over.
“Call the maesters!” Alicent commanded at once.
The room erupted into motion.
.
Before dinner, Maera decided to wash the blood away.
She sat quietly in the bath within her chambers, savoring the rare silence she so deeply valued. The warm water eased the tension from her muscles, and for a brief moment, she allowed herself to simply exist.
Then the hidden passage door creaked open.
“Like old times, huh?”
She didn’t even bother turning around. Only one person would stroll into her chambers through a secret passage as though he owned the place.
“You were absolutely astonishing tonight, my dear cousin.”
Aegon’s voice carried its usual amusement as he stepped into view. He stopped beside the bath, openly admiring her without the slightest hint of shame.
“Why, thank you.” She smirked. “Would you hand me my robe?”
She pointed toward the robes folded beside him.
“While I do rather enjoy the current view, your wish is my command.” With an exaggerated sigh, he handed them over.
Maera rose from the bath without embarrassment and wrapped the robe around herself before making her way toward her vanity.
“That snake got exactly what he deserved,” she scoffed. “I’ve wanted to kill him ever since Laena’s funeral.” She reached for her brush, but Aegon stepped behind her and gently plucked it from her hands.
Without asking, he began combing her long hair. Their eyes met through the mirror.
“I have to admit,” he said thoughtfully, “you’ve changed so much and yet not at all. What you did in that throne room was equal parts terrifying and beautiful.”
His grin widened.
“Made me hard on the spot.”
Maera laughed.
“You haven’t changed one bit, dear cousin.”
⸻
At dinner, Maera found herself seated beside Jace.
Unfortunately, Jace was seated beside Baela.
She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. She should have been happy for him. The marriage alliance made perfect sense. So why did it feel like someone was twisting a knife in her chest?
Why hadn’t Rhaenyra chosen her?
Why Baela?
The questions lingered in her mind throughout the entire feast. She barely paid attention to the conversations around her.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears as Viserys spoke openly about his failing health, and she smiled sadly as Rhaenyra and Alicent exchanged surprisingly kind words.
Perhaps, she thought.
Perhaps everything would somehow be alright.
“Play some music!”
The king’s cheerful command echoed through the hall. Almost immediately, people began rising from their seats. Luke and Jace joined Rhaena and Helaena on the dance floor.
At least Helaena seemed happy.
That alone brought Maera some comfort.
She was lifting her goblet to her lips when a hand suddenly appeared in front of her.
“Would you care to dance, dear cousin?” Aemond stood before her, a small smile tugging at his lips.
“My, Ser Aemond knows how to dance?” she teased.
“We all have our secrets.”
Taking his hand, she allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor. She laughed as he spun her effortlessly through the crowd.
For the first time since arriving in King’s Landing, everything felt normal.
She laughed.
She danced.
She spun beneath the music.
It was as though her laughter had never left the castle at all. As though the years apart had never happened.
Viserys watched fondly from his seat.
His gaze lingered on Maera and Aemond before he leaned toward his daughter.
“Have you ever considered marrying Maera to Aemond?” he asked quietly. “Look at them. They’re a perfect match.”
Rhaenyra nearly choked on her wine. Beside her, Daemon immediately stiffened. Over the years, he had rejected countless proposals. He had turned away powerful houses and valuable alliances without hesitation.
He had no desire to marry off his daughter simply because politics demanded it.
Not his Maera.
And certainly not to Aemond.
“I… haven’t really considered it, no,” Rhaenyra answered carefully.
“Perhaps you should, my dear.”
Viserys smiled faintly before a violent coughing fit overtook him. Alicent immediately rose from her seat and called for the maesters.
The music died.
The room fell silent.
Maera watched sadly as her uncle was escorted from the hall. The feast resumed shortly afterward.
Unfortunately, Luke’s inability to hide his amusement quickly ruined the fragile peace.
The main course arrived.
A roasted pig.
Luke smirked.
Maera immediately knew what was about to happen. She tossed a grape at his head.
Too late.
Aemond rose from his seat.
“A final tribute,” he announced, lifting his cup. “To the health of my nephews. Jace. Luke. Joffrey.”
Oh, gods.
“Each of them handsome. Wise. Strong.”
“Aemond,” Maera warned.
He raised a hand without even looking at her. “Come. Let us drain our cups to these three… Strong boys.”
“Aemond!”
“I dare you to say that again,” Jace snapped.
Aemond turned slowly.
“Why? ’Twas merely a compliment. Do you not think yourself strong?”
That was all it took.
Jace lunged.
His fist connected with Aemond’s jaw, and Aemond barely reacted. Luke jumped to help, but Aegon intercepted him and promptly shoved him into the table.
Chaos erupted.
Rhaenyra and Alicent both attempted to stop their sons. Neither listened. With an exhausted sigh, Maera drained the rest of her wine and rose from her chair.
Guards were already pulling Jace away. Still, he struggled against them. When he tried to charge forward again, Maera stepped directly in front of Aemond.
Her expression turned cold.
She said nothing.
Jace stared at her.
The disappointment in his eyes hurt far more than any insult. “After all these years,” he spat, “you still defend them.” Then he stormed from the hall.
Luke quickly followed.
Maera sighed heavily.
Turning around, she fixed Aemond with the exact same look. Aemond stared back. Then he scoffed under his breath and walked away as well.
“May I be excused?” she asked quietly.
“Of course, my dear girl,” Alicent answered.
Maera nodded and slipped out of the hall. She knew exactly where to find him.
⸻
Jace sat beneath the heart tree. The red leaves rustled softly above him.
“You know I’d never stop defending you, Jace.” Maera sat beside him.
He didn’t look at her. His eyes remained fixed on the tree.
“Do you love him?”
Her head snapped toward him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Aemond.”
Finally, he looked at her. His gaze was intense. Unwavering.
“Do you love him?”
Maera swallowed.
“I… of course I love him—”
Jace scoffed and started to rise. Her hand shot out immediately and caught his.
“He’s my friend, Jace.”
She squeezed his hand gently.
“I love him the same way I love Helaena and Aegon.”
He went still.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Jace had loved her for as long as he could remember. When his mother informed him of his betrothal to Baela, he had nearly begged her to choose Maera instead. And seeing how close Maera had always been with Aemond…He had convinced himself he was already too late.
Slowly, he sat back down. Closer this time.
Their hands remained intertwined.
“I do not wish to marry Baela,” he admitted softly.
Maera’s heart skipped.
“And who is it that you wish to marry?”
“You.”
The answer came without hesitation as his eyes searched hers desperately. Looking for hope. For rejection. For anything. His breath caught when her fingers tightened around his.
“Me too,” she whispered.
For a moment, neither moved. Neither breathed.
“Promise me,” Jace said quietly.
He turned fully toward her.
“Promise me we’ll find a way.”
Maera smiled sadly. Then she squeezed his hand once more.
I never thought I’d post anything let alone multiple chapters. I was crying rivers last week and I did in fact not like Jace’s death. Istg I was crying on the train.
Anyways I decided to change some stuff so hope yall like it :)
Contains: swearing, death, blood, fighting, eventual smut? If it’s requested, happy ending. Honestly I don’t even know how to use warnings I don’t think it’s needed for people who watched GOT or HOTD. Also it’s kinda rushed so not so many details, the first chapters are honestly just an introduction to Maera, I don’t even know how long this fanfic will be so please do not judge me.
Happy reading!!
————————————————————————————
Maera Targaryen was adored by both her family and the realm. She was known not only for her true Valyrian beauty, but also for her spirit, intelligence, and remarkable abilities. As Daemon’s firstborn child with Lady Rhea Royce, she had always held a special place in his heart. He made certain that she learned everything he knew, whether it involved wielding a blade or navigating the treacherous game of politics.
After her mother’s tragic death, Maera was sent to King’s Landing. Being only a babe at the time, it was no surprise that she quickly began stealing hearts, starting with the king himself and his young wife, Alicent Hightower, who had only recently given birth to Aegon.
Rhaenyra did not think much of the child at first. However, as Maera grew older and began displaying a personality strikingly similar to Daemon’s, Rhaenyra found herself tolerating, and eventually enjoying her presence more often.
And as the years passed, Maera blossomed into a beautiful and strong-willed girl whose laughter constantly echoed through the halls of the Red Keep. She trained alongside her cousins Aegon and Aemond, as well as Jacaerys and Lucerys. She occasionally attempted to knit and spend time with Helaena, but she always ended up sneaking away from her septas, much to the king’s dismay.
While her cousins spent their days in the Dragonpit training with their young dragons, Maera preferred to ride horseback into the woods and spend time with her own dragon, the Cannibal. She refused to confine him to the cramped Dragonpit, and she certainly had no intention of allowing the dragonkeepers anywhere near her precious companion.
You see, Maera and the Cannibal shared a bond unlike any normally seen between dragon and rider. She never viewed him as a beast of war or a creature meant to be controlled. Their relationship was built upon more than mutual respect, it was built upon love.
She had loved the dragon from the moment she laid eyes upon him at only six years old, and it seemed the feeling had been mutual. It was as though he had chosen her the instant he saw her small grass-stained hands reaching toward him without fear.
Their extraordinary bond earned Maera the title of The Dragon’s Spirit, a name spoken throughout the realm with equal parts admiration and fear.
It was on her fifteenth nameday that news of her stepmother’s death swept through the castle. She felt sorrow, of course, but she had never truly known the woman. Maera had refused to leave King’s Landing to live with her father and Laena, having grown far too accustomed to life in the Red Keep.
Daemon, naturally, had disapproved. Yet when she gave him that look, he knew there was absolutely no changing her mind.
She stood beside her father as Ser Vaemond delivered his speech, and when he cast Rhaenyra and her children a look of pure disgust while speaking of blood purity, Maera immediately decided she disliked him.
She had never cared about the rumors surrounding Rhaenyra’s children. Quite frankly, it was none of her concern. She loved Jace and Luke, and she never hesitated to silence anyone foolish enough to question them in her presence.
Sometime after the speech, she was forced to accompany Jace and Luke in comforting her half-sisters. Rhaenyra gave her a look that left little room for argument before practically shoving her toward the grieving girls.
It wasn’t that Maera hated them.
They simply did not matter to her.
She knew they resented her for being Daemon’s favorite child, and as a result, she remained distant and cold toward them.
It was the night they shook her awake that she truly began to dislike them, however. Vhagar had apparently been “stolen,” and Baela was determined to seek revenge.
Still half asleep, Maera allowed Jace to pull her along by the hand as they made their way toward the underground passageways. There, they found Aemond returning.
“It’s him!”
“It’s me,” he replied calmly.
“Vhagar is my mother’s dragon—”
“Aemond!” Maera immediately broke into a grin and ran forward, throwing her arms around him. “You actually did it! I’m so proud of you!”
For a brief moment, she felt him return the embrace before Baela’s furious voice shattered the moment.
“She was mine to claim!” Baela shouted, stomping her foot.
“Your mother’s dead. Vhagar has a new rider now.”
Maera winced at Aemond’s harsh words. She did not particularly care for her half-sisters, but they had only just lost their mother.
She never quite knew how the fight began.
One moment she was pushing Aemond away from Luke as he choked him, and the next she was trying to shield Aemond as the others cornered him.
Then suddenly—
Aemond was screaming.
Blood poured down his face.
An eye was gone.
Her uncle was furious, to say the least.
His voice thundered through the hall as he demanded answers, and it was only then that Daemon and Rhaenyra finally arrived.
Rhaenyra, of course, defended her sons. Maera understood her instinct to protect them. She even understood her choice of words.
But none of that changed the simple truth.
Aemond had lost a fucking eye.
“Your grace, if I may.”
Her voice cut through the chaos, causing everyone in the room to look toward her. The king offered her a small, hidden smile and nodded.
“I would like to begin by stating that a dragon cannot be ‘claimed.’ A dragon chooses its rider. If Vhagar chose Aemond, then neither Baela nor Rhaena was ever meant to have her.”
She paused, allowing her words to settle.
“I will admit there were cruel words spoken regarding Jace and Luke’s inheritance. However, that does not excuse the fact that my dear cousin has just lost… an… eye.”
Alicent shot the girl a grateful look. Unfortunately, her fury was already too great. The argument quickly escalated, resulting in Rhaenyra’s injury.
It was on that day that Aemond Targaryen fell utterly and completely in love with Maera.
⸻
“Dragonstone? Why the fuck would I go to Dragonstone?”
She raised an eyebrow as her father looked at her.
“Because we’re all going there, love. I want you by my side. I missed you. Quite a lot, actually. Please? Oh, pretty please?”
She nearly laughed at his sarcastic sad face, yet the truth was that she had missed him just as much. Walking forward, she wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace.
“Dragonstone it is,” she whispered.
⸻
“What?! You’re leaving?!”
Aemond practically seethed as he received the news. The four of them sat along the beach. Maera, Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond. Jace and Luke had refused to join them following the incident several nights prior, and they were still mourning Ser Laenor.
“You’d actually choose them over us?” Aegon scoffed.
Maera shot him a warning look. She knew exactly what he meant: bastards.
“I do not wish to leave my father’s side again,” she replied firmly while braiding Helaena’s hair. “I will write whenever I can. I promise.”
“You’d better,” Aemond muttered in defeat.
“Please visit.” Maera smiled as Helaena held her hand.
“I promise.”
⸻
Time flew by once more, and Maera’s seventeenth nameday was fast approaching. She had already received gifts from King’s Landing.
A golden goblet from Aegon.
A beautiful dress from Helaena, likely sewn by her own hands.
A ruby necklace from Alicent.
And finally, from Aemond, a ring adorned with a sapphire that matched the one she had once gifted him after he lost his eye.
She was training in the yard when a guard approached. Reacting on instinct, she grabbed him and flipped him onto the ground before turning to fend off two others. The unfortunate man wheezed and coughed as he staggered upright.
Maera was already preparing another attack when he stumbled backward. “M-My lady! I’m here because you’ve been requested!”
She stared for a moment before bursting into laughter.
“My apologies, Ser Lewis. I thought you had joined the training.” He bowed sheepishly before escorting her toward the dining hall.
“Sorry for my sweaty appearance I was training…” her voice faded as she sensed the tension in the room.
“What happened?”
Rhaenyra sat silently, one hand resting against her swollen belly, while Daemon stood near the window staring outside.
“We leave for King’s Landing at first light,” Rhaenyra announced.
Maera frowned.
“Are you certain you’re fit to fly? What’s happened? Perhaps Father and I can go instead and find out—”
“They are questioning Luke’s claim to Driftmark. The entire council.”
Rhaenyra’s voice trembled with frustration.
“And if they question my son’s inheritance, then they question mine. It is time to remind them who the true heir is.”
The look she gave Maera carried both hope and desperation.
The bond between them had always been complicated. At times they felt like sisters. At others, Maera found herself viewing Rhaenyra as the mother she had lost long ago.
Regardless, she loved her dearly.
And she would be damned before allowing her to face this alone.
Kneeling before her, Maera gently took her hands.
“Then we shall remind them exactly who the true heir is.”
She smiled.
Daemon finally moved from his place by the window and rested a reassuring hand on Rhaenyra’s shoulder.
SUMMARY: A prince washes up on the shore outside your cottage, and you must decide whether you’re going to leave him to his fate or save his life. Either way, you know there will be consequences.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, commoner!reader, eventual dragonseed!reader, jace lives, eventual smut, class differences (jace is obviously a prince and reader is a commoner). Reader is not too fond of him at first because she is from Sharp Point. This is a bit of a mix of show canon and book canon in that Jace went to the Gullet to save his brothers and Rhaena still claimed Sheepstealer
AUTHOR'S NOTES: i HADDDD to do a fic for our beloved boy </3 i miss you jacaerys velaryon, prince of dragonstone, heir to the iron throne. I will truly never move on from this death </3 so we need a world where he does not die. I'm saur excited for this because it's my first time writing a reader who comes from a commoner background, AND I finally get to write the dragons ... originally she was not supposed to be a dragonseed, but I just cannot help myself. If I'm going to be writing a hotd era fic, our girl is going to have a dragon. ANYWAY I hope you guys enjoy! please leave a comment or reblog mwah mwah
You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.
By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away.
You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.
It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.
You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.
Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.
The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.
Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.
This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.
This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.
But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again.
You should leave him.
The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.
By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all.
It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—
As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.
You feel sick to your stomach.
He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.
He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.
The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—
—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.
The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.
You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.
And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not.
His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.
He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.
He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous.
Cold. Hurt. Dying.
You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path.
A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name.
If this boy lives, others will come looking for him.
And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.
Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t.
He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.
Except, he didn’t, did he?
He should be dead—any other man would be dead.
Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.
The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.
The Stranger came for him and left him with you.
Why?
There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.
So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?
You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.
You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.
Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment.
If there is life, you will do what you must.
If there is not, you will turn and walk away.
You have never prayed for someone to be dead before.
Please, you think now miserably. Please.
Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—
There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.
Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.
You know that this boy could be the death of you.
The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.
Worse still, he could recover.
Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.
The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.
“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need.
His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir.
Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.
With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.
—————————
He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne.
Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you.
You spend the first day trying to keep him alive.
You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.
You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood.
You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.
It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone.
And then there were the arrows.
The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.
You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands.
It should have been agony—any man would have cried out.
The prince does not so much as flinch.
You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there.
A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died.
A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.
A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.
But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.
The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life.
You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway.
You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever.
Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.
His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.
You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.
Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.
At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.
Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”
You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore.
You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.
The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.
You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince.
You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.
You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.
Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives.
When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death.
The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.
It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.
But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches.
Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.
Then you remind yourself that this is her doing.
Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of.
There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen.
You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded.
Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life.
You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince.
There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.
You—
“Who are you?”
There is a knife to your throat.
You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper.
“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”
You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.
Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back.
You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed.
For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive.
Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”
The prince stares at you.
As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns.
To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.
He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.
His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”
You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”
“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”
The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face.
Shame crosses his expression instantly.
“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”
He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet.
Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?”
You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers.
Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face.
“I suppose not.”
The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.
You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.
Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“I am fine,” he insists.
“You should sit, my prince.”
“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.
“Barely.”
The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days.
Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."
You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."
His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument.
You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries.
The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale.
Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles.
He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.
You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.
You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.
You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.
Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.
One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.
"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”
“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”
You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.
You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.
“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”
Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed.
You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”
His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.
“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”
Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table.
You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.
You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely.
“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”
“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”
How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then?
Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands.
Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.
Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away.
It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week.
You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.
“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?”
You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head.
“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours.
You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back.
You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing.
If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate.
It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.
Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—
You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.
“Sorry,” you say quietly.
“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”
“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”
“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”
You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”
“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”
It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread.
The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.
“I do not—”
“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”
Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.
If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him.
“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin.
What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head.
“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no.
“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”
He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed.
“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”
For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him.
Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind.
One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.
You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.
Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run.
He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer.
“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”
He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.
“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”
He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table.
“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”
You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.
With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better.
————————————
The sea is on fire.
Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries.
He tries to focus.
He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena.
He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.
Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—
—and Vermax is falling.
Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.
He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax.
Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.
Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe.
When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too.
There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.
But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time.
He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—
He wants his mother.
He just wants his mother.
He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.
And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.
The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.
And then—then all he remembers is sea.
White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—
“... prince, the stew is ready.”
Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…
The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—
You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.
He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.
He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.
Is he crying?
Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table.
Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger.
Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.
Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.
“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”
You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”
“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body.
Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.
He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.
You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”
“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”
You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.
“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well.
You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.
You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore.
“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”
“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips.
The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.
His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.
Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.
“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”
“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.
Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further.
“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”
You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.
“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”
You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.
That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away.
From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up.
You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely.
“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”
You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.
“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”
Jace opens his mouth.
He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.
He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here?
That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.
His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly.
You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.
He does not think he has ever felt less like the heir to a kingdom.
