Chapter Text
consoling love’s anguish, with his hollow lyre, sang of you, you, alone on the empty shore, of you as day neared, of you as day departed.
-the georgics
The room stinks of smoke and blood and burning flesh.
Valarr has a distant understanding of what they are doing when he stumbles into his father’s chambers. Fire helps to staunch spilt blood, to deal with the lesser wounds as the more severe one is attended to. Fire is a life saving measure, when lives need saving.
Fire and blood.
He does not know much. He had been sequestered away, chewing at the skin at his fingertips while waiting for the farce Aerion’s trial had become to come to end and divest Father of his armor. And then he had been grabbed by a frantic Aegon, of all people, tugging at his leg insistently and all but screaming that something terrible had happened and his father had been injured. A blow to the back of the head, crumpled in the hedge knight’s arms, a maester was needed quickly. It had been hard to discern, with the high pitch of Aegon’s desperation and the fast run of his words, everything blurring together save for Baelor and hurt.
For a moment, Valarr had thought his little cousin was telling him that Father was dead.
But he is not. In his chambers, Maester Yormwell working furiously over him, Valarr can see the rise and fall of his chest. Shallow, uneven, and far too faint. And the scent of blood is thick. Aegon was right; the wound, from the little Valarr has seen of it, is terrible. Grievous and grisly. It is the kind of wound that kills.
“Is he going to die?” Valarr feels his breath coming in short. “Is my father going to die?”
“I will do my utmost, my prince.” Small comfort. Too small a comfort.
He is shaking. Yormwell and his attendants swarm about his lord father, applying their poultices and burning brands and bandages and wielding strange metal devices designed to keep Baelor Breakspear from dying. It is only their presence that prevents him from crumbling to the ground. You need to be strong, a voice says in his head. It sounds like Grandfather and Father both. Valarr cannot collapse. He is now the most senior member of the royal family at Ashford, the nominal head of affairs and the one with the most authority, so long as his father lies insensate on the bed as maesters work to patch the hole in his head.
So he stands. He stands and digs his nails into his palms so hard he can feel the blood welling up from the stinging cuts. He tries to find some solace in the steady, assured movements of the maesters. Perhaps they will suffice.
Perhaps Father can survive this.
They leave him with grave faces. They have done all they can; it is in the hands of the gods now. They leave, and Valarr practically falls into the rickety chair by Father’s bedside.
Father’s breath is still coming in short and uneven. Valarr’s is as well, even though he is uninjured, and he claps a hand over his mouth to stop the absurd laughter that wants to crawl up his throat.
It is in the hands of the gods now. The gods now own the fate of his father, his father swathed in bandages about his head and chest, his father with bruises on his face, his father whose breathing stutters too often and who is pale and wan and too small in his borrowed bed. They have him, for good or for ill. Valarr feels sick.
But still, he clasps his hands and closes his eyes. The Seven have love for those who follow them, the septons on Dragonstone would say. They will heed your prayers, if you heed them in turn.
“Please,” Valarr whispers now into his folded fingers. “Please. I’ll never ask for anything. Never again. Not sons, nor even daughters. Not long life for myself or my brother or my grandfather or anyone else. I will not beg for a short winter or a long summer, an easy reign, aid in battle, a bountiful harvest. Nothing. Ever again, for as long as I am alive.” He swallows a sob. “So long as you let my father live. Let him live, please let him live, and you will never hear from me again. But let him live. Please, do not take him from me so soon. Let him live.”
His throat is tight and sore, his head aching and his eyes hot with tears, but still he bows his head and says it over and over. Let him live. Please let him live. All through the night.
Valarr’s eyes burn with salt and sleeplessness into the morning, when Yormwell comes to check on the head wound and redress the other bandages. There has been no change, as far as Valarr can tell, nor does Yormwell make mention of anything; he prays that is a good sign.
Yet still, “Tell my uncle I would speak with him, when he has a moment.”
“Of course, my prince,” Yormwell says dutifully. “Prince Maekar has taken up residence in —”
Valarr’s nerves are worn raw. He has spent the night staring at his father, looking half a corpse already, and begging unseen gods to intercede. “Fetch him here,” he snarls. He cannot leave this bedside, surely anyone can see that.
And so Maekar comes to him, slowly and haltingly. He must have taken some wound to the leg, limping towards Father’s sickbed; he walks as if he is older even than Grandfather. As if each step causes him pain. The bruises on his face are stark and livid, the rest of the skin ashen pale.
“Gods above.” His voice is ghastly. Valarr has never heard it sound that way, rasping and hesitant. That is not Maekar; Maekar is brash and unapologetic in his brusqueness. Maekar does not falter. Maekar, he has a dim memory of it, had once caught him when he’d tripped over himself when running too close to the Iron Throne, a time they had all been at court, when Valarr was very small. Maekar had grabbed at his wrist and swung him up in his arms before he accidentally impaled himself. Maekar is quick and sure.
Maekar might have killed his father.
Valarr swallows thickly and wills his eyes not to dampen. He needs to show strength, not frailty. So he stands, though he allows himself the weakness of keeping a hand tight on the back of his chair for balance. His uncle’s hands are curled into fists at his side.
“Yormwell says he has done all he can.”
“Yormwell is a fucking fool,” Maekar says, venomous.
Valarr bites his tongue and stares at his father’s prone form. He wonders, between him and everyone else, how many bloodsoaked bandages have gone to waste here at Ashford. And how many of them on those who were actually worth saving?
“Will he live?” Valarr asks quietly.
He can all but hear the sudden clench of Maekar’s jaw. “So they say.” When Valarr turns to him, he cannot read the look on his uncle’s face. If it is a blessing or a curse to him that his son’s fate is assured while his brother’s hangs in the balance. He has not stopped looking at Father, since the moment he entered the room.
“He withdrew his accusation.”
“Valarr.”
“He withdrew his accusation. He lied.” Shamefully, childishly, his voice cracks in the open air. Valarr clenches his eyes shut against the sudden press of tears. “He lied and now two men, good men, are dead, and a prince of the realm…” Might die. My father.
It feels sacrilegious, to even think it. His father is Baelor Breakspear, the Hammer, the man who crushed the Blackfyres with his fist, the Prince of Dragonstone and the Hand of the King. He is the next Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and the greatest man Valarr has ever known. He cannot be the kind of man who might die like this.
He grips the back of his chair hard. “He lied.” He opens his wet eyes to look at Maekar now; his uncle has still not stopped looking at Father. “He lied and put us through that ghastly show and then recanted only when forced. And now whether or not the heir to the throne lives relies on the mercy of the gods, because of him.”
Maekar shakes his head. “Aerion had his right —”
“My father may be dying!” His voice breaks on a sob, and Maekar flinches as if struck. Valarr does not think he’s ever seen his uncle flinch in all his life.
“You think I do not know that?” he asks in that terrible voice. He finally looks at Valarr fully with hollow, overfilled eyes. “Your father, yes, and my brother before he was anything else. You think I do not see him?” Maekar’s voice wavers.
Valarr presses his hands to his eyes. Father would be ashamed, to see him weeping like a small child, to see his son and his brother at odds over where he lays prone. So Valarr bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood and desperately wills himself to stop crying.
“Uncle, they are saying…”
“I am aware of what they say,” Maekar bites out. They say that it was a terrible combination of things. Prince Maekar swung his mace too hard, and the helm Baelor wore was too little protection against it. The two of them can both lay claim to Father's life. “I am aware of what they think of me.” He forces it out from his teeth, eyes flicking to Father’s face for a moment before they dart away. He presses his lips together tightly.
“I do not think it.” Father would never have dreamed to say it. Should he wake, he will no doubt demand the tongues of anyone who would say that his brother meant to have him killed. That is what Valarr has told himself, over and over, when he was not praying. “I don’t.”
His uncle shuts his eyes tight. “I thought he would be slain.” Maekar says it as if it is some shameful admission. A dark and terrible thing, to fear for his child.
“I know.” Valar wipes uselessly at his face. “I have not been blessed with living children, no, but I know a little of the love a father can feel for his son. I know why you did it. I understand. You love your family,” Valarr chokes out. Maekar gives him an anguished look. “No more than I love mine. But if my father dies you will have to kill me as well, Uncle, or I will carve out Aerion’s heart with mine own hands for doing this to us.”
There is a whole litany of firsts in this. This is the first time Valarr has seen his father so still and pale and so near death. This is the first time he has lost control of himself like this since he was a small child. This is the first time he’s ever seen tears on Maekar’s cheeks, or glittering in his horrified eyes.
Valarr has to sit. His legs feel weak, and it would be humiliating, to crumple at the knees like a boy just learning how to walk. “There must be consequences.” He had thought to say it as a command, when he first realized he would need to speak with his uncle in the aftermath of all this. It sounds too much like pleading now. “There has to be. Please.” Now, he begs.
Maekar’s breathing is harsh, a damp rattle in the open air. Valarr can hear the heavy, halting drag of his footsteps, the stumble in them as he comes closer. But he cannot bring himself to look up.
“The Free Cities, for a time,” Maekar says thickly, voice shaking. “Some time away would teach him, gods be good, something he has not yet found here.”
A good idea. Valarr thinks he nods to it; there will be details to be smoothed over later, but even the knowledge that the wretch would be on other shores lifts a little weight off of his shoulders. But something still seizes, tight and fearful, when he hears the steps begin to move away.
“Stay.” The steps stop. “Uncle, stay, I cannot…I want…”
He cannot have his father die. He wants his father not to die. He wants to be able to wipe his eyes and know there is no cause for tears. He wants someone to tell him, without hesitation, that everything will be alright. He does not want to be left alone in the world. He cannot be alone.
There are hands on his shoulders. Warm. Heavy. As if he is being leaned upon, rather than simply touched, the nails digging into him through the fabric of his doublet with the full force of his uncle’s strength. He likes it. The weight of it. The grip is tight; Valarr wants it even tighter. To clutch him to the ground. He takes one of his father’s limp hands and presses his face to it. There is wetness falling on his hair in drops, and a rasping sound above him that might be Maekar, sobbing.
Valarr’s hands tremble where they hold his father’s.
His own squires had been attempting, poorly, to dress his father, until Valarr dismissed them.
“Leave us,” he’d said. And when they’d looked to Father, he had gotten curt. “Get out.”
“You should do more to remember your courtesies,” Father had chided him after they’d been left alone. He’d said it with a smile, the way he often did when he did not want an instruction to sting too much. Valarr did not return it this time.
“My courtesies can be handled at another time. You are going into combat.” He had gone to his father then, to tighten the straps around his shoulders. His fingers had felt stiff, wooden almost, but he had done it all the same. “You should be suited by someone who knows what they are doing, not green boys.”
“And who knows your armor better than you, is that the way of it?” Father had said it gently, and Valarr had bitten down sharply at his bottom lip and yanked at something harder than he would otherwise.
“The last time there was a trial of seven in Westeros, fourteen men entered and thirteen ended up dead,” he’d said quietly. “And the one who survived was the most monstrous of them all.” He’d kept his eyes fixed on his hands, on the way they fitted his own armor to his father’s body, even as he’d felt the heat of Father’s gaze on him.
For what had felt to be the first time in his entire life, he had not wanted to look back.
Father had always commanded others with nothing more than his mere presence; to feel him look on you was enough to return. Valarr had been just as all the others. Where his father had beckoned, he had followed. Trailed after his footsteps, gazed where he’d told him to, done as he’d been told. But Father had been past the age for tourneys by the time Valarr had been old enough to squire, and the Blackfyres had long been cowed…
Had he looked up, he would have seen his father armored for a fight with men who would see him dead for the first time in his life.
“I have seen my share of combat, child.” Valarr had thought he’d tasted blood as his teeth sank deeper into his flesh. He’d shut his eyes. “I can handle myself.”
“It’s dangerous.” His armor was still so polished. Untouched by sword or lance, it had gleamed in the lowlight of his tent. Valarr leaned his head against the smooth metal curve of shoulder, sucking in a deep breath. “And you are the next in line to the throne. You need to be protected.”
Father had passed a hand over his hair, fingers combing delicately through the strands. The other cupped his face, thumb brushing against where Valarr had been biting at his lip until he’d released it. His skin had been warm, where he’d traced the red indent. He had always run warm, his father.
“Ah, ñuha dōna valītsos,” he’d murmured. “I will be protected. Look at me.” And Valarr had looked, looked at his father’s eyes, the eyes his father had given to him in turn. He’d been smiling. Warm and gentle and soft at the corners. “There you are,” he’d said, the way he often would when Valarr would steal up to some lofty battlement on Dragonstone in his worse moods, and Father would have to come find him and coax him back down to the ground. “Your armor will serve well enough.”
“It would serve better if it were on the one it was meant for.” Valarr had straightened his back then. “If you insist that someone must partake on this fool’s errand for Aegon’s hedge knight, let it be me. The same oath that binds the Kingsguard protects me as much as you, and I have just as much prestige —”
“No.” Father’s hand had tightened on his face, holding him still. “It will be me, and I will brook no argument from you on this.” He brought Valarr close, touched his forehead to his. “You are my son.”
And you are my father, Valarr should have said. The heir to the throne, the Hand of the King. He should have pressed harder at Father’s value, the need for him to stay secure. If House Targaryen must be seen to be just as well as be just, then let someone else do it.
Instead, he had nodded, and breathed in the faint scent of sandalwood and cardamom Father always had. Father had smoothed back his hair with gentle hands and pressed a kiss to his forehead and called him sweet boy again.
And Valarr had continued suiting him.
“Your armor will protect me better than any other,” Father had said as Valarr had helped him pull the gloves onto his hands. “I promise you.”
Father smells of blood and herbal salves now. His face is slack and expressionless, his hands dry and cool to the touch where Valarr holds them.
He is unmoored. Adrift.
“You promised.”
Valarr holds Father’s hands and he prays. All through the day and through the following night into the new day, he prays, whispers his entreaties against Father’s fingers where he’s folded them over his own.
His uncle has taken up a vigil at the other side of the bed. He has never been one for godliness, Maekar, but if he feels something at Valarr’s piety, he mercifully has kept it to himself. He snarls at the maesters who come in on occasion to change the bandages or to check to make sure Father has not gotten worse, wordless and guttural things that make Valarr think of the lions Damon Lannister keeps in his cages at Casterly Rock, or the Dragonmont when it grows restless.
Valarr prays, Maekar keeps his watch, and neither of them sleep. Valarr is not sure what he would do if someone told him to try and sleep. Perhaps he would growl, the way his uncle has. Or scream. He can feel the fatigue in his bones, even sitting, but the thought of resting seems so foreign to him.
He will not be able to sleep until he knows for a certainty that his father lives.
Valarr is repeating an old hymn to the Stranger when the hand he holds twitches. A small thing, barely there, small enough that his uncle startles in surprise when Valarr snaps his head up. A small enough thing that he wonders if he imagined it, before the hand twitches again, and Prince Baelor Breakspear’s eyelashes flutter.
“Get Yormwell,” he rasps out, and for once, his uncle obeys instructions without complaint or comment. “Father.” He whispers it softly, clutching at the hands he holds as if they are the only thing binding him to the ground. “Father.”
When his father opens his eyes and blinks blearily at him, Valarr does not weep again, but it is a near thing. He looks tired, and pained, but there is recognition in them, a glimmer of Baelor in the eyes he gave Valarr. And it is enough to show that he is alive.
Yormwell rushes in, Maekar behind him, and even though the maester looks peeved that Valarr refuses to stop clutching at Father’s hand, he says nothing. He does some rudimentary tests, has Father follow his finger with his eyes and count to ten like a child, which makes Valarr grind his teeth as badly as Maekar. But in the end, he proclaims that Baelor Breakspear will survive. His principle ruling is that the Prince of Dragonstone needs to rest, in order to heal, but he will live.
He will live.
“Who knows how many more days that means in this miserable fucking place,” Maekar grumbles to himself as he fidgets restlessly in his seat after Yormwell departs. Valarr’s throat grows tight when Father manages to turn his head and give his brother a warning look that says behave. He had not realized how much he had missed even those small things until now.
“I’m sure we will not stress much more of Lord Ashford’s hospitality,” Father says. He says it slowly, and winces partway through, but he says it. He speaks. He lives.
“The Others bugger Lord Ashford’s hospitality. We should be going home.”
“Well.” Father makes as if he wants to sit up, before pain flashes across his face; Valarr is already with a hand at his shoulder, keeping him steady. Yormwell had said it was best for him to stay still for the moment, and Valarr wonders if it would be untoward to forcibly restrain the Hand of the King to the bed. “The worst has passed, brother. You are more than welcome to return to Summerhall, if you must.”
That stills his uncle, who gives Father a look of naked hurt. “I am not going to leave you,” he whispers.
Something spasms in Father’s face, and he swallows thickly. “I know.” Father reaches out and manages to pat Maekar’s hand kindly. “I know. But for the moment, I cannot imagine you will be very interested in watching me sleep. You ought to attend to your sons.” He smiles. “It’s all right. Go.”
Maekar looks at Father for a long moment. Then he nods, takes his brother’s hand, gripping it tight between his two own, and bends until his forehead touches the knuckles. It is a short thing, brief, before Maekar straightens and stands and limps out of the room without looking back.
“That is the most affectionate he’s been since he was a little boy,” Father says softly. He gazes after where Maekar left with an unreadable look in his eyes.
Valarr hums. “The last few days have been…trying.”
“I can imagine.”
“You cannot.” Valarr surprises himself. He has always been good; he has never spoken out of turn to Father or Grandfather, has always been courteous and polite no matter what. He has never snapped at his father, or behaved impudently.
But he has been scraped raw since the horns sounded that misty morning.
“You cannot imagine it,” he continues. “You seemed like to die, Father, you…” His voice breaks. “I thought you were going to die.”
He has chafed, shamefully, at being the second in line. A lifetime of waiting, with more waiting after that. On the tips of his toes, on the cusp of something, a lifetime of water at the brim of the cup but never quite spilling over. But that was a boy’s annoyance, a boy who grew up cossetted and too assured. That boy no longer exists now. Valarr would wait a thousand more years; now he wants to spend his whole life in the shadow of the throne without ever actually climbing it. For his cup to overflow, his father must die.
The tears prick at his eyes again, and he scrubs at his face with a harsh sniff. He is not ready for his father to die. He does not think he will ever be ready for his father to die.
“Valarr…”
He squares his shoulders for the reproach, for the This is conduct unbecoming of you that comes when Father must discipline wayward behavior in him or Matarys. Instead, Father raises a shaking hand and cards gently through his hair, through the streak of silver-gold that denotes him as blood of his blood, blood of the dragon, a son of House Targaryen. Baelor’s son. The touch is feather soft; Valarr’s breath seizes in his chest.
“I am sorry,” Father says quietly. “Not for the actions I took, but for the grief they —” He stops. “The grief I put you through.”
His fingers move to brush away the wetness under Valarr’s eyes. The sleeplessness of these last days weighs heavily on him, and he leans into Father’s hand. His flesh is warm again. His thumb traces back and forth across his skin with living touch, rubbing away the salt of bygone tears from when Valarr had thought he would never be warm again.
“My good boy.” There are dark circles under Father’s mismatched eyes, his face still tired and wan, but his gaze is tender. “I’m right here.”
Valarr swallows. “Yes you are,” he says firmly. “And you need your rest in order to remain here.” Father’s hand drops, and his eyes flutter closed as he eases himself back down.
Perhaps now that his life no longer hangs in the balance, Valarr should go to his own rooms, or attend to other matters, do something beside sit at his father’s bedside. The thought repulses him, as Father’s breathing evens out in sleep. He will stay.
Father is still sleeping when Valarr summons the hedge knight.
He meets him, and the shadow Aegon has become to him, in the adjoining solar, the door kept open so that he can see to Father’s bed, should he suddenly be needed. But at least here they can speak without worrying about waking him.
They both look nervous, and the hedge knight looks dreadful, still bruised and bloodied and with an eye swollen purple-black. Valarr finds his consolation in the fact that his dreadful cousin no doubt fares even worse as the vanquished; a fitting punishment, given what had almost happened. Aegon is fidgeting from foot to foot, looking at Valarr as if he is going to suddenly attack them.
“I trust you are recovering well, ser?” Valarr asks diplomatically.
The hedge knight nods. “Yes, my prince. And, er, they have not said much about his Grace…” He glances furtively at the open door, towards the sleeping form on the bed.
“The gods are good. He will live.” Both he and Aegon visibly lose tension in their stances at that. “And I am told, Ser Duncan, that after your trial, you pledged yourself to him.”
Even stooped with pain, he squares his shoulders at that. “I did, my prince. He…he accepted me.”
“He did,” Aegon adds, little fingers already bunching into fists at his side, as if already anticipating that his hedge knight’s honor will yet again be called into question.
Valarr holds up a hand. “I have no doubt that he did.” His father has always valued talent over birth, actions over blood lineage. Valarr has seen him get into more than his fair share of arguments about it with both Maekar and Aerys. “But there is a complication.”
“A complication?” Ser Duncan’s brow furrows.
“My father will live,” and Valarr will kneel in the sept every day, seven times a day if he must, for the rest of his own life in thanks, “but he will not instantly return to what he once was. The road of his recovery will be long, and no doubt arduous. He will be leading no armies, training no men, providing no adventure or heroism or the service men oft dream of when they hear they will follow a prince of the realm.”
Ser Duncan has proven his honor, but he is still young. And the young are so rarely content with the household when there was greatness to be had elsewhere. Already, Valarr can see the droop in Ser Duncan’s shoulders.
“I will be taking up my father’s martial duties, both in his recovery and further on, when he ascends the throne,” Valarr continues. “I cannot promise you glory, ser. I cannot promise you songs in your name, nor maids who would name their babes after you, nor great deeds for the histories. But I can promise you honorable service. A good living. A chance to stand at the side of the Crown, until the end of your days.” He slides his eyes to where Aegon is looking at him, almost trembling. “I can even, with his father’s approval, promise you Aegon as your squire, to train by your side either with me or even at Summerhall for a time. These things I can give you, and I will, if you would have them.”
Ser Duncan is taller than him, much taller than him, but he is staring as moon-eyed at Valarr as any small peasant child the royal retinue chanced to pass on the road, gazing up at the horses and banners and lofty men with craning necks as if this was the first time they had seen the sun.
Valarr straightens his shoulders. He is a prince of the realm. The blood of the dragon. The heir to the Iron Throne after his father. He is Baelor Breakspear’s son.
“You will not be my father’s man.” He holds out his hand to the hedge knight. “But you can be my man. I will take you. Ride for me. Serve Prince Valarr of House Targaryen.”
It must hurt, but Ser Duncan drops heavily to both knees. He grasps at Valarr’s hand tightly, as if he were like to snatch it away. He presses his bruised lips to his knuckles. “My prince…” He nods emphatically. “Your man, Prince Valarr. Your man.” Aegon leans in close to him then, whispering in his ear. Ser Duncan flushes crimson. “That is, I am your’s. Your liege man, my prince. I will, er, shield your back and keep your counsel…” Aegon whispers something else to him. “And lay down my life for your’s, if need be. I swear it, by the old gods and the new.”
Valarr has been better trained than the hedge knight, and the man who trained his predecessor. He does not need his little cousin to prompt him as well. “And I vow that you shall always have a place at my hearth, and meat and mead at my table, and pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you into dishonor. I swear it by the old gods and the new.” He squeezes Ser Duncan’s hand, just the once, before releasing him. “Arise, Ser Duncan. And go tend to your wounds. I require my men to be in good condition.”
“At once my prince, at once, I…” Ser Duncan stumbles to his feet, glancing from Valarr to the open door that leads to where his father is sleeping. He must think this is all some dream. Valarr half thinks it too. That he will wake and perhaps his father will still be unchanged, or before they even arrived at Ashford, back before everything altered. “Thank you.”
Valarr should keep to his own apartments. His father is, nominally, out of danger, and does not need a nursemaid. Even if he did, there are others better suited to it than Valarr; still, even the thought of leaving his father’s room turns his stomach. The further away he gets, the more nauseated he feels. So he sits, and listens to what the maesters say about what needs to be done, and thanks Lord Ashford as effusively as a prince of the realm can muster for his continued hospitality and his assurances that no, the Crown does not hold what has happened here against him.
Father is taking notice.
“Surely this,” he gestures to where Valarr is writing a letter to Grandfather, “can be better done elsewhere.”
“I am comfortable here,” Valarr says firmly. If there is a crick in his back and he has stripped himself down to shirtsleeves to alleviate some of the stress on his shoulders, his father does not need to know that in his recovery.
“Valarr.” Father says it firmly enough that Valarr cannot help but meet his eyes. “You need to sleep.”
Valarr splutters. “Wh—you need to sleep!”
“And I have been. Incessantly.” He raises an eyebrow. “You, meanwhile, I have not seen so much as close your eyes for a moment, and I doubt you had done so before I awoke for the first time.”
“I…” Even abed, skull wrapped in bandages, Valarr still feels the urge to shrink down from Father’s eyes on his face, from the chastisement, gentle though it may be. “You might need…I don’t…” He casts about helplessly for the right words, twists his hands together, letter forgotten. He must be strong; his gut roils at the thought of leaving.
Father’s eyes are shining oddly in the low light of the evening. “Ah, Valarr…” He sighs, and reaches for his hand. Valarr lets him take it. “You are still young.”
“Not so young,” he mutters. He has been knighted. He has been wedded, had children, though none have lived. He has sat in council, given words of advice to the Hand and to the King. He had spent days preparing himself for the possibility of being the heir to the Iron Throne.
Father’s hand squeezes his. “To me you will always be young. I look at you and there are times when I still see the boy you were. My boy. And right now I see my boy, exhausted. You need rest. Stay here if you must, even.”
“Someone needs to attend to you.” It is what Yormwell and the other maesters have all said. And Valarr has shirked enough responsibility here at Ashford.
“Someone will,” Father says firmly. “But not you. Not anymore. You have done more than enough.”
He sounds so much as he did that last night before the trial. Authoritative and so assured that he is easy to believe. Valarr shudders at the memory, and yet, just as he did last time, he acquiesces to his father’s will. He sets his papers aside and lets himself be guided until he lays at Father’s side and allows his eyes to flutter shut.
“You must wake me should you need anything,” Valarr murmurs.
His head feels heavy. There is an arm around his shoulders, tugging him close, letting him curl up at his father’s side, face pressed against him. Valarr can feel his warmth. He can hear the steadiness of his heartbeat, thumping under his ear. Father’s hand brushes over his hair.
“The only thing I need is you.”
He sleeps. He sleeps and, mercifully, he does not dream of blood or dead fathers as he feared.
He knows he wakes at one moment, more of a half waking than anything else. He is under the coverlets now, cocooned in the softness, rather than atop, tucked more firmly against Father’s chest to feel his warmth. He hears hushed voices, his father’s and his uncle’s. And there’s a hand playing with his hair, tender, smoothing over the silver streak with steady repetition.
“...can sleep in his own bed,” he hears.
“You will begrudge me wanting my son close? You?”
“I…” His uncle’s voice falls away. “We will discuss this later, Baelor, when you are mended.”
“Yes, we will.” Father sighs. Valarr feels it, and shifts closer to him in his half-sleeping state. There is an arm around his shoulders; it tightens on him. “He is here as much for me as for him.”
A kiss lands on his forehead. A hand smooths along his shoulders. Valarr slips fully back into unconsciousness even as he pushes into the caress.
When he wakes fully, it is early dawn, with a single taper burning in the window. Father is already awake, still stroking his hair. He only turns away from the ravenscroll he reads when Valarr groans and struggles to sit up, rubbing at his eyes.
“You ought to have woken me to attend to whatever it is.”
Father shakes his head. “A message from your grandfather. Nothing you need to worry about, not when you dearly needed the rest.”
Valarr sighs and shakes the last vestiges of sleep from his shoulders. “How long have I been abed?”
“A night and a day and another night.” Father reaches out to touch his cheek gently. “Tell me truly, did you not even attempt to sleep at all beforehand?”
“How could I?” Yet still, he leans into his father’s touch. “There were things to be done, and no one else capable of doing them.”
Father touches the bandages at his own head with a rueful twist of his mouth. “Some might say it is a father’s responsibility to ease the weight from his son’s shoulders, not the other way around.”
“I am your son,” Valarr says. “Your heir. Your burdens are mine own when you cannot carry them. It is my responsibility to fulfill all your duties, do all that you would do, when you cannot.”
Father pulls him to an embrace, and Valarr goes willingly. It feels good, to press his face to the side of his neck, to breathe in the scent of him and feel the rush of his living blood under his skin. He fists his hands in Father’s shirt and lets himself be held, held tighter than he has been since he was a small child.
“You did well,” Father tells him. “I am proud of you. And I am sorry.”
“There is no need for you to be.” Valarr shuts his eyes again and takes a moment to count the steady rhythm of Prince Baelor’s heart. “You’re here.”