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The dawn had not yet unfurled its pale banners across the sky when the first solid contraction occurred. He had been having smaller ones throughout the last moon, but this one came as a tightening deep within his bowels, a merciless girding of flesh about bone, and Aerion woke with a sharp intake of breath. His fingers closed convulsively in the fine linen sheets, crushing the costly weave in his grasp, and for a long moment he did not stir; only his heart moved, beating swift and hard, a war drum reverberating through his ribs.
His belly, great in its fullness, rose beneath the tremulous glow of the oil-lamp that had kept its vigil through the night. The flame guttered faintly, printing restless shadows across the carved bedposts and the pale expanse of his skin. The child was still, for he he had no space to move about anymore.
When the pain returned, Aerion arched upon the mattress as a hand flew to the curve of his lower belly. This was no common discomfort of the latter moons and no dull weight nor restless stirring of limbs; it was a tightening that gathered its strength and broke in waves, binding his loins, seizing the small of his back, and spilling downward into his thighs.
“Not yet,” he breathed, to no one but himself. The words were scarcely more than a rasp torn from sleep.
Beneath his palm, his belly hardened to iron. A sound escaped him, forced between clenched teeth. Not yet, he thought, as the next contraction endured, stretching thin and merciless, until his whole frame curved inward about it. Sweat beaded upon his brow, slid in shining tracks along his temples, and gathered at the hollow of his throat. When at last the pain relented, it did so with cruel leisure. Aerion remained bent and breathless, his silver hair clinging damply to his flushed cheeks.
There were no servants in attendance, no midwife at the hearth, and no steady presence to command the hour. Duncan was not there, his mind remembered him bitterly.
With effort, he forced himself upright. His belly weighed him down, and every move seemed to drain him of power over his own being. At the edge of the bed, a deeper pressure bore down within his hips, stealing the air from his lungs.
By the Seven Hells, damn the broad-boned strength of your father, he mentally cursed, all courtly refinement stripped from him as the pain spread along his lower back like a blade, sliding between bone and sinew. His legs trembled. Again his womb clenched, hard as a mailed fist. The inward pressure mounted, and when it passed, it left him gasping.
Yet he would not remain abed like some frail creature; he stood on unsteady footing even as the burden of his belly drew him forward, shifting the axis of his body and compelling him to lay a hand upon the wall lest he topple. His untrimmed nails scraped against the polished wood of a table when another took him unawares.
“By all the gods…” his voice fractured, descending into something nearer a growl than speech. “What torment have you decreed for me…”
He sought to summon the counsel once delivered to him: draw breath deep into the lungs and release it slowly through the nose. Shortly, the instructions scattered like chaff in the gale of pain. In that hour he felt made small by his own suffering, humbled in a fashion no court ever had.
At the thought of Duncan, angry tears welled in his eyes.
“If you are not at my side when I have finished bringing your son forth,” he swore hoarsely into the empty chamber. “I shall see you flayed for it, by gods or by my own hand.”
At last, footsteps came echoing along the gallery before the doors flew wide with force. It was not Duncan entering first, as his foolish mind briefly hoped for; it was the maester, followed by maids with trembling hands, seasoned midwives and two septas whose lips already moved ceaselessly in supplication.
Aerion was bent once more over the carved foot of the bed, both hands driven deep into the dark wood. His once immaculate hair clung in damp strands to brow and temple, and his cheeks were flushed to crimson, his eyes bright with fevered light. Another contraction struck him ere he could utter a word. He folded further inward, chin nearly to chest.
A midwife moved to steady him, but he shook her off with a flash of temper.
“Stand aside,” he commanded through clenched teeth. “If you would serve me, then do so with purpose. Bring me water.”
The woman stammered, retreating with wide and startled eyes, “At once, Your Highness.”
The maester approached. Aerion permitted him closer, and the man’s wrinkly and seasoned hands settled upon the great swell of his belly, testing its firmness and discerning the child’s lie within.
“The babe does not favor an easy path. He lies somewhat askew. The labor shall be the longer for it.”
Aerion raised his head, and there was wildfire in his gaze. He wished to say something fierce back to him, but the pain he felt was much too difficult to endure. Instead, he straightened up his spine and moved from the bed, pacing the chamber with heavy steps.
When a servant hastened to place a stool behind him, he dismissed it with a sharp motion of his hand.
“I will not sit,” he panted, proudly. “Where is my water? Am I speaking to a wall of stone?”
The edge in his tone could not conceal the agony beneath. A deep groan tore from him with another contraction, swelling into a strangled cry when the pain rose to its terrible height and broke over his body. His strength began failing him; his labors had stretched so long that the pale glow of the morning had ripened into full daylight, only to begin its slow descent towards dusk once more. Basins of water stood clouded in his chambers, damp cloths lay heaped and discarded, mortar and pestle rested amidst crushed leaves and roots whose scents clung to the throat.
“Now,” the maester urged. “Bear down, Your Highness. With all that remains to you.”
Aerion did, yet the child’s oblique lie continued to exact its cruel toll. It was then the blood came in earnest, at first a narrow ribbon of red over his pallor, then more and spreading. One of the maids stifled a gasp at the sight.
The maester bent low at once, “Hold him steady.”
The metallic tang rose sharp in Aerion’s nostrils. The sight of crimson against his own white skin sent a moment’s vertigo through him. The brittle dome of pride that had borne him thus far shattered at last; his hauteur, his measured composure, the cutting of his tongue, all were stripped from him beneath the twin weights of pain and the creeping specter of fear.
He thought of his own mother’s death in her birth bed and the many others he had heard since he was but a pup. Queen Aemma had been cut open and left to bleed freely for her son to be born, yet he died only minutes after. Princess Daella, Laena Velaryon; they all passed bringing forth their children.
I cannot die like this, I cannot die like this, I cannot die like this, he repeated endlessly in his mind.
“Your Highness is bleeding too freely,” one of the midwives whispered thinly.
“I hear you,” Aerion growled, though his eyes were wide, luminous with something perilously close to terror. Within him there came a sensation as of rending, an intolerable pressure. The name tore from him, “Ser Duncan! Bring him to me at once!”
The chamber stilled as confused eyes fell upon him.
“Bring him,” he commanded again, the words breaking at their edges. “Bring him now.”
The maester hesitated for the span of a fractured heartbeat, for Ser Duncan was in the city, far beyond the castle walls. Aerion saw it, and his eyes flared near incandescently.
“If you dare remain idle whilst I bleed upon this accursed bed I swear by all that yet remains of my line that I shall have your heads when this is done…”
The pain cuts the thread short. He cried out again, the sound dissolving into supplication. At last, a maid hastened to the doors; her voice carried the command down the corridors to waiting guards. The tidings would fly through the city like an arrow loosed from a bow.
Within the chamber, Aerion was guided back upon the mattress. His strength was no longer equal to defiance.
“Look at me, Your Highness,” the maester urged, striving to tether him to the present hour. “You must remain wakeful.”
“Do not dare,” Aerion whimpered, shutting his eyes. “Do not dare allow me to die here without him.”
The man nodded, though his expression remained strict.
“The child has descended, Your Highness,” he said. “You can bear down.”
Aerion does what he is instructed to with a cry, as the path remained cruelly narrow.
“The Captain has been notified, Your Highness,” someone spoke from the doors. “He had just returned from the city.”
Gods, Aerion thought deliriously, bring him faster.
Two other maesters were called and entered his chambers quickly, and the three wise men discussed lowly as he panted.
“...we may have no choice,” one said grimly. “If we do not act, we risk losing them both.”
Through the haze of torment, through the roaring in his ears and the suffocating heat, Aerion understood; they would open him like butchered game. They would carve his child from his body and likely leave him cold upon the bed.
His fingers clawed at the sheets.
The echo of another cry had not yet faded when the thunder of hurried steps broke upon the corridor beyond. The doors bursted open with so much force the hinges seemed to snap. Through the thick smell of blood and herbs came a scent Aerion knew as surely as his own; leather warmed by the sun and metal.
Duncan.
Road dust clung to his boots and his gold cloak hung askew, unfastened in haste. His mousy brown hair was windswept from hard riding and his breath still drawn deep from the gallop, yet his eyes immediately sought only one figure in that crowded chamber.
“Your Highness,” the man breathed out, advancing into the room.
The maids scattered themselves around the bed, creating an open path for the knight, who looked stricken. His broad face had gone ashen, his jaw tight with a fear he made no effort to disguise. In three strides, he came to Aerion’s side, heedless of watching eyes, and dropped to one knee, cradling a fevered face in his large palms.
“I am here,” he said deeply, voice roughened. A blue-eyed gaze fell upon the swell of Aerion’s belly, where he lay a hand over the accentuated curve. “Is it time, then?”
“You were long in coming,” he hissed, seizing his forearm. His nails bit into sun-kissed skin.
One of the maesters cleared his throat, “Your Highness, the babe…”
“Do not let them,” Aerion spoke directly to the knight. “Do you hear me? I will not be butchered.”
Protests began; they spoke of his womb as if he was not in the room. While it happened, Aerion arched from the bed as another contraction seized him. The babe is in peril, his mind reminded him, yet when the maesters move forward once more, intent upon their duties, he snarled, “Stand back, all of you!”
They all exchanged uncertain glances.
The wounded instinct of the omega within awakened; the press of so many bodies within his chamber, within the sacred bounds of his nesting space, became unbearable. The scents of alphas and betas, of incense and crushed herbs and blood choked his senses. It all felt wrong, wrong, wrong.
His body sought but one scent. Dragging Duncan nearer, Aerion whispered, “I do not want them here. I cannot bear it. It is all wrong. He does not descend. They are… they are watching me.”
Duncan lifted his gaze to the maesters. His jaw set hard as stone.
“Leave us.”
“It is unwise, Ser,” the man of the chain protested, striving for reason. “The labors do not advance. We must…”
“Leave us at once.”
The silence spread for a second too long before, slowly, they began to withdraw; the septas gathered their robes and slipped toward the door, prayers dying upon their tongues, and the midwives followed, uneasy. The maesters’ gazes measured Aerion’s pallor, the blood upon the sheets and the precarious nearness of a catastrophe. Still, they retreated.
Once they were alone, Aerion exhaled a trembling breath.
“If anything happens to him, I will see this place reduced to ash. All of it.”
“Nothing will happen to him,” Duncan promised.
Soon, the bed became a prison to him. His body craved movement, a position that might allow it to open of its own accord.
“I must rise.”
“I will help you. Come,” Duncan slid an arm behind his back and assisted him to his feet, bracing him when his knees trembled.
No sooner had he stood than another wave gathered its strength. He buckled, but Duncan steadied him without a beat of hesitation.
“Ah, gods…”
Bent over the bed, he swayed from side to side, seeking some lesser cruelty in the angle of pressure that threatened to cleave him apart. Behind him, Duncan’s large hands came to rest upon the narrow sweep of his hips. He applied upward and inward pressure, supporting the vast weight of the belly, easing some small measure of strain from the lower back and pelvis.
“Yes,” a mewl left Aerion’s lips.
“Does it help?”
Aerion groaned, ignoring the question as he felt the pressure once again.
“He is too large,” he panted. “Damn you… he has taken all of it from you.”
Honestly, Duncan bowed his head, though Aerion could not see it, “I am sorry, Your Highness.”
The pressure became nearly unbearable. It wrung fresh tears from his eyes and sent them spilling down his flushed cheeks. He bore down and felt his body opening further, leaning more heavily upon his braced arms. Finding a rhythm, he pushed again, held fast within the circle of strong arms. After long hours of misalignment and resistance, there came a singular instant in which the pressure ceased its oblique torment, slipping into its true accord; the babe had set himself upon the path.
Gasping, his fingers shipped against the thick coverlet. His belly contracted, and the sensation was unlike any he had known before.
He has found his way, Aerion wanted to say, but the relief was brief. With the next contraction, there came another rush of blood, copiously streaming down his thighs and darkening the floor beneath his feet. His vision blurred, and his body, so taxed and worn, swayed.
“No,” he murmured, scarcely aware he had spoken. “No, no, no…”
It was time to push yet again, but his strength ran thin through the effort of it. His mother’s face appeared behind his eyelids, and panic rose in his chest.
“I will fail. I cannot… he is too large… I cannot…”
The pain tore through him, and the words dissolved into a groan.
“Duncan, I cannot do this,” he cried in despair. “I cannot give you a son. I…”
“Your body knows its work,” Duncan answered. It sounded as if he desperately wanted to believe his own words.
Aerion shook his head, “There is too much blood.”
Adjusting his hold upon his hips, Duncan guided him gently forward.
“When it comes, you will push with me. Slowly. Do not fight it. Let it do its work.”
I do not want to die, please. Do not let me die.
As best as he could, he obeyed the instinct woven into Duncan’s words. Crying out, he bore down as the contraction reached its height, sustaining the effort for as long as breath and strength allowed. It rewarded him with an exquisite stretching, followed by a pressure lower still; his body opened in a manner almost beyond.
“That is it,” Duncan said. “He is nearly here.”
Aerion trembled from crown to heel.
“Stay with me,” he whimpered.
Duncan nodded, pressing a tender, fleeting kiss to his back, “Always.”
In the final push, his body stretched to the very limit of its design. Sustained by the broad hands that had not once faltered, the dragon crossed beyond the brink of fear. Aerion felt it build from the depth of his belly to the base of his spine, spreading through his exhausted pelvis, pressing bone apart, opening him beyond what he had ever believed survivable.
“All at once, now,” said Duncan.
Aerion screamed, seized the bedclothes with both hands, fingers blanched by strain. It burned.
“Duncan,” he cried, suspended between agony and surrender.
Duncan’s warm hands adjusted his hips to grant the child passage, “He is coming.”
And then it was so; the head emerged with that ultimate effort. Duncan bent at once with prepared hands. The shoulders slipped free, then the rest in one singular breath.
The stillness of the newborn did not last; the cry came strong, ringing through the chamber. Aerion’s legs nearly gave way, and Duncan was forced to support him with one arm while, with the other, he kept their son secure against his chest.
The moment Aerion glanced at the child, he all but lost his breath once again.
“Give him,” he rasped out.
With hands that had unhorsed many men and lifted shields in battle, Duncan cradled the babe gently and lowered him into Aerion’s waiting arms.
The infant’s skin was flushed and damp, and his violet eyes, darkened still with the haze of birth, blinked slowly beneath furrowed, almost inexistent eyebrows. A pale fuzz crowned his head, already hinting at the silver gilt that would one day blaze. Yet the shape of his jaw, the stubborn breadth of his nose and cheek, bore testimony to Duncan’s blood.
Drawing the child closer to his breast, Aerion pressed a kiss to the damp crown of his head, saying, “Large, as foretold.”
“He has his father’s strength,” Duncan mused.
“Which father?” Aerion returned faintly, though the barb lacked venom.
The babe quieted by slow degrees, soothed by the warmth. His small mouth opened and closed in blind search, and then he settled with a cheek pressed against Aerion’s pale skin.
A smile touched Duncan’s mouth.
Only a minute after, different from a contraction, but bothersome all the same, Aerion stiffened when his body reminded him his labors were not quite done yet with a cramp within his emptied womb.
“Seven curse it,” he hissed, shifting the babe back toward Duncan. “Take him. It is not yet done.”
Duncan’s thick brows drew together at once. He gathered their son close against his broad chest, instinctively shielding the small head with one large palm.
“What is it?” he demanded, already turning toward the doors.
“The afterbirth,” Aerion forced out. At his alarmed face, he clenched his teeth and added, “Do not look at me so. I have not been split in twain only to die upon the remains.”
Still, the fear, so recently soothed, returned in a rush to Duncan’s expression, and he strode to the chamber doors to call for the maesters.
“His Highness needs attendance!” he declared, thundering down the corridor. The waiting figures, upon being summoned, started at once into motion.
Within the chamber, Aerion braced both hands upon the mattress once more and groaned, more out of impatience than fear.
He mumbled, “See that I am not made to labor until nightfall for what should have followed at once.”
“It will pass shortly, Your Highness,” the elder maester replied. “Your body is completing its work at last.”
Aerion shot him a withering look. The strength that had carried him through the birth had thinned; what remained was stubborn pride and the last embers of endurance. Still he bore down as instructed. The sensation was strange, and shortly, with a wet rush and a muted sound of discomfort, the burden left him.
Heedless of the cluster of hands and linens being stripped from the bed, Duncan, who had passed the babe carefully to a waiting midwife, supported him with a hand on his back.
“It is done,” the maester declared before retreating.
Aerion sagged against Duncan and closed his eyes, pallid lashes against colored skin. When at last the midwife returned their son, swaddled and indignant once more, Duncan lowered him carefully into his arms.
“Maegor.”
Duncan’s gaze lifted slowly, “Maegor?”
“His name shall be Maegor,” Aerion clarified, tracing a finger down the curve of the babe’s pink cheek
Duncan’s thumb brushed absently along the swaddling.
“He was not much loved, I have heard.”
“They feared him,” Aerion replied coolly. “I would sooner my son be feared than devoured by rats.”
At that, Duncan huffed a faint breath that might almost have been a laugh, though it held no mockery.
“The King will have thoughts on such a choice.”
“And what are the King’s thoughts to me in this hour? Did he labor? Did he bleed upon these sheets? Did he stand upon the brink of death to bring this child forth?”
Duncan did not answer, for there was none to give.
Aerion bent his head and pressed his lips to the babe’s brow.
“Let them whisper if it pleases them. Maegor will be strong, and he will endure it.”
As I will, he completed it himself.
“Well,” Duncan started quietly, reaching out to brush one careful finger against the infant’s tiny hand. The fingers curled around him at once, fierce in their grip. “Then let the realm brace itself.”
Aerion smiled proudly, “Let it.”