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The sky above King’s Landing glows green when your fever breaks.
Making for the stables in the early morning, you hold a candle out to guide your path in darkness. The servants charged with maintaining the Keep’s oil lanterns had long fallen from fever, and they’d remained unreplaced since. An eerie quiet fills the castle in their stead, your footsteps a loud echo through once crowded halls.
Keeping your eyes ahead as you pass by piles of rot, you step around swollen remains that would soon be dragged to the dragonpit. The smell is thick. Suffocating and sickeningly sweet. Through a dining chamber, you pick up pace to be free of the stench, fleeing down stairs leading to the wash rooms – bolting through a side door leading from a small kitchen, not stopping until you’re free of the castle’s trapped air.
Finally outside, you yank down a thin cloth covering your lower face— inhaling gulping breaths until your lungs feel fit to burst. The skin of your fingers scorch as you pinch the candle’s flame, storing it in a satchel by your side for later use. Turning your head slightly as you do, you catch a glimpse of the Hand’s tower rising through a trail of greenish smoke. The sight nearly calls you back.
In a better year, perhaps you’d climb the tower’s winding stairs to find Baelor and his sons tucked away in his solar. They’d drink wine and welcome you in, a small mismatched family shielded from the realm.
They were gone. You turn away.
In the stables, many stalls stand empty. Hunger had come when the city’s food supplies dwindled, and the horses lived for surprisingly long. The stables were only sacked after each chicken, pigeon, and pig were plucked to bone. You’d thought the horses simply gone like so much of King’s Landing, until you’d heard whispers of a horse left unharmed– uneaten out of respect for its dead rider.
The stale rot of hay fills your nose as you stand before Baelor’s horse. Thin, too thin, its head hangs low, the white streak in its hair filthied from neglect. Carefully so as not to spook it, you move to hand it an apple from the satchel hanging by your side.
But you hesitate. Food rations were low, and the road to Summerhall was long.
When the horse eyes you sadly, looking as pathetic as you feel— you pull the apple anyway, finding the flesh softened and overly ripe in your hand. The horse’s ears perk when you hold it out, a better offering than moistly rotted hay.
“I never thought to ask him your name,” you whisper, voice scratching against your throat from lack of use. “I’m sorry."
Baelor’s horse offers no response. It simply eats from your palm, nibbling at your skin when you have no more to offer.
–
You ride from King’s Landing on a lie, passing through emptied streets with your cloak’s hood pulled tight over your head. Stopped at the city gates, you flash the signet ring chained around your neck— “King’s orders,” you state.
In truth, the king had already burned with his grandsons. You do not know who sits on the throne, or if Maekar has been named Hand. Any clarity of rule had been lost with King Daeron’s last rattled breath, and you’d fallen quickly from whatever place of privilege Baelor’s treatment granted you.
Each morning you remained living, you woke knowing very little.
The guard standing by the gate simply stares with bloodshot eyes. He coughs, a wet hack of lungs that shakes his shoulders. You press a hand over the cloth covering your face.
“Ain’t supposed to let anyone through,” he sniffs. “King’s orders.”
Staring at the pallor of his skin, you offer the Stranger a small prayer– then toss a pouch of coin the man’s way when it becomes clear he will not let you through. With a slow shriek, the gate lifts enough for you to slip away, only to shut behind you again.
The city remains sealed in sickness.
–
Brigands roam the Kingsroad and the land is dry. As you pass through the realm that Baelor cared for, it seems the land itself grieves him too – lashing out in its loss with horrible peril.
You ride hard during the day, sleeping fitfully at night concealed within hedges. You light no fire and you eat what you can: bread as hard as a club, a half wheel of cheese with an ugly fuzz, a small section of saltbeef that hurts your teeth to chew.
The scarcity was worrying, as it was an amount unfit for two. Days blurred strangely during a plague, but time had passed since Ashford — and you had not bled. It was a complication. A terrible complication, that finds you sobbing by a thin stream one afternoon, letting Baelor’s horse drink what water it could before you collected the rest.
You try to send a raven to Summerhall while on the road, to inform Maekar of your escape from King’s Landing and to request escort — only to find each village you come across hollowed. Emptied of help and food. Soon you stop approaching inns nestled along the roads, having risked a peek in enough to know you’ll find only bodies inside, the trapped stench fetid and burning to your eyes.
As you continue through lifeless lands stricken by plague and drought, you think of Valarr and Matarys. Of how the fever trapped within them had searched for release, splitting the skin of their lips dry with a crack of blood. At sunset, you think of them still, brushing the mane of Baelor’s horse until the spill of black is gleaming.
Each stroke of brush becomes an act of apology, a care and protection that you’re unable to offer the dead: I’m sorry.
–
Summerhall appears much as you remember it, remarkably untouched by the realm’s collapse. Marbled and pristine, it simply glows pink in wait at sunset, protected by a roll of red mountains around it.
Two weeks on the road find you and Baelor’s horse near starved, filthied and beaten low from your travels. You bring with you no food, little water. The destrier had long slowed, but you could not leave it behind; worried that it would collapse from your weight, you approach the castle’s gates on foot instead. Unaware that you'd debated its survival, the horse simply follows the loose grip you hold around frayed rope reins.
You’d tossed its Targaryen dressings in a ditch perhaps a day from King’s Landing. With half the realm starving or sick, people were simply hungry for blame. Unfortunate for you, as any glimpse of red and black quickly proved to be a target on your back. The sword slung around your hip lays sullied with use, your head remains covered by a dented helm— plucked from a thief once you’d learned of the importance of face cover.
“Halt! Step no further,” a guard calls, high up on the battlements. “Prince Maekar is accepting no petitions for an audience. Go back from whence you came.”
When you raise your eyes against the orange spill of the sun, you see a crossbow staring back.
Exhausted and impatient, you simply yank again at the chain around your neck— pulling Maekar’s signet ring from up and over your head. Your coin had run out and you had no bribe. In truth, the ring was all you had left of any worth.
It dangles limp from your grip as you announce your false name.
“His Grace is expecting me. If word spreads that you’ve turned me away– to starve along Prince Baelor’s horse, he will see you dead.”
It feels deeply wrong to use Baelor’s name for your advantage in his absence, as if you were no more than a climbing courtier clinging to his cloak. But his name’s influence seems to work. The guard hesitates. Without taking his eyes from you, he leans his head to whisper to someone out of view.
The crossbow lowers.
Summerhall’s iron gates rise.
—
A servant with a stooped back and weathered hands escorts you through a guest wing of the castle. She shows you into a small set of chambers, motioning to a bath that had been prepared without request. Judging by the muck covering your hands, you were filthy. The smell of road dust and sweat rolls from you in waves.
You eye the water impatiently as she lights candles around the chamber.
“Apologies for the delay, ser. A change of dress is in the wardrobe, help yourself to what fits. Prince Maekar will be informed of your arrival, soon as we find him at least.” As she lights the last candle’s flame, she shuffles towards the door. “His Grace has been distant since Ashford, but worse somehow, since being passed over as Hand. He’s ridden off to the woods most days, doing Seven knows what.”
You take a steadying breath. Despite everything, you’d hoped that Maekar would be named Hand. It was what Baelor would have wanted someday… but perhaps that no longer mattered.
“I tended to his late brother, you know. Years ago, when they both summered here…” the servant’s voice quiets as she moves into the hall, shutting the door without noise behind her.
You’re left alone with your thoughts.
Turning towards the bath, you make short work of your filthy armor and plainclothes. Peeling each layer from your body, you toss the dirtied rags into a pile far from the bath, catching a glimpse of your stomach in a silvered mirror as you do.
Rounded. Still easy enough to hide, but growing by the day. You fear what's to come, wondering briefly if you could pass it off as a stomach born from ale, like the bellies of men who lived in taverns. Perhaps being labeled a drunkard would be better than potentially bearing a dead prince’s babe.
The thought feels wrong. It all feels a mess, and as you slip into warm water — you curse Baelor.
It’d be easier to hate him.
—
“I believed you dead.”
You jolt awake, sending a splash of water from the cooled tub. Bleary eyed and struggling to see in low light, you reach for a blade that was absent from your person. Maekar watches you from the chamber’s entrance, shadowed and supported by a cane. Your panic softens at the sight of him, all the weariness you’d carried on the road gone– until it all returns in a moment, remembering the predicament you carried in your middle.
Blinking, you wipe a splash of water from your eyes. You attempt to speak— to say something, but find your tongue stuck. Pulling your knees to your chest instead, you curl your arms protectively over your legs.
The water’s heat had long fled. A shiver runs along your back.
“I see you still deem me unworthy of speech," Maekar says quietly. “I do not fault you for it.”
His appearance had healed somewhat since Ashford. The purplish bruises along his skin were no more, but a fresh scar curves across the bridge of his nose. A mark left by Baelor’s hand perhaps— if the Gods were at all good.
When you remain silent, Maekar walks with an uneven gait to a small table spread with food and a flagon of wine. You watch in cold panic as he pours a cup high— your chest rising and falling fast as he limps to your side.
Maekar holds the wine for you to take, a slight tremor in his grip. Candlelight flashes against Baelor’s signet ring, snug around the bone of his finger.
You’d seen him pull it from what remained of his brother after the pyre.
“Drink. You look no better than the bloodied things Aegon’s cat leaves at my feet. He’s left that fucking creature in my care now, off as he is squiring for that… hedge knight,” he grits, as if grinding the words to dust between his teeth. “And now the stable hand reports you’ve brought me Baelor’s horse as well.”
A response still fails you as the wine hovers before your eyes. You’d spent enough time around your mother growing up to know what maesters warned of, that drink posed risks to a babe’s health — and you hadn’t dragged yourself across a half-dead realm to simply poison yourself with cups.
You push Maekar’s hand away.
“I cannot,” you whisper.
Maekar’s hand trembles at your words. A small spill of wine betrays him, falling to your bath with a splash. His eyes drag over you, falling at rest on your drawn knees.
“And pray tell– why the fuck not?”
You blink away a sting of tears, letting your aching knees stretch and fall beneath the cold water. Maekar’s back straightens. His eyes drop to your breasts, damnable man — before falling further to your stomach. He takes a deep breath, throat moving and twitching as he swallows.
“How long?” he demands.
You watch his reaction carefully from the side of your eye. “Ashford.”
Maekar reacts as if struck, staggering away. He tosses his cane with a clatter. The wine goes next, a clunking roll, a red splatter across plush rugs. He moves a step, then two, his hands clenched around his waist.
“Valarr, Matarys… my nephews lay dead. Do you understand what this means?”
“More than I wish to.” You drop your head to your hands, unwilling to think, unwanting to think. “I may carry Baelor’s bastard… but promise me that the child may remain far from the throne. I’ve witnessed enough tragedy born from your house for one life— I refuse to give another to it.”
“That choice is not yours to make.” His eyes narrow, rounding upon you. “Lift your head at once. You’re my brother’s wife— fuck, his widow,” he corrects quickly. “Baelor would not sire a bloody bastard.”
You avert your attention to a far point of the chamber, unable to meet his eye. Baelor may have married you to protect your honor– but there had been no witnesses. Worse still, Maekar had not gone the same lengths to protect you.
“And if the babe has your likeness?” you ask quietly.
Silence.
By the time Maekar speaks, you’ve lifted yourself from the water to dry the chill from your skin. You move to cover yourself with a thin tunic pulled from the wardrobe, but Maekar stops you — a grip on your wrist, halting your movement.
“You and the child have a place at Summerhall… give me time to figure the rest.”
You stand uncomfortably before him, bare as your nameday, stuck in place as his hands move to grip your shoulders.
“And when your servants whisper that you’ve sired a bastard– on a woman playing pretend at knighthood?”
“There is already talk that I meant to kill my brother. Consider it a blessing that I cannot fall much further.”
It feels terribly mean to think, but you agree with Maekar’s assessment. The worst he could be condemned for had already come to pass. He was a kinslayer. Baelor was gone, his sons with him. Perhaps it was an added punishment from the Gods, that Baelor’s line may only continue through you– a woman whose loyalties to House Targaryen had been reduced to ash.
Shaking your head, you move to push the thought away. There was little you could do other than wait now.
“Baelor would have named you Hand,” you offer quietly instead.
Maekar pulls away.
—
In the time after your arrival, you simply sleep away your days. Surrounded by thin satin bed curtains, you watch how the light changes them from early morning to midday. The curtains are purple in color, as nearly everything in your chambers is, and you find they move from a pinkish lilac at dawn to a clearer lavender in high sun.
In truth, you find your color observations quite boring. But you feel stuck- unable to do much, as if your limbs were made of heavy stone.
Meals are brought to you when you fail to move from beneath thick covers. You eat plain porridge and drink honeyed tea; you pick at soft cheese and stewed meat– an abundance compared to what you’d scavenged on the road.
In the evenings, you force yourself from your chambers, finding that when the sun falls, thoughts of Baelor become looping and endless– a relentless haunting born of your mind’s own recall. Daeron seems as reclusive as his father, but Daella and Rhae seem glad to have your company returned to them. A rare brightness in the gloom of your days, you find them happier with Aerion gone.
“We made potions to hurt him, but now Father’s sent Aerion away,” Rhae tells you one night over supper, blowing at a spoonful of soup. She and Daella sit on either side of you — Maekar across. “Poison kisses grow in the gardens here. We smashed the flowers up and put them in a bottle of milk. My hands burned after and Daella smeared them with mud.”
“It was harmless. I tossed it all in the hearth, Father. We did not truly wish to hurt Aerion— I swear,” Daella speaks quickly with clasped hands, watching Maekar carefully.
Maekar meets your eye. You stare at him unspeaking, as you did during most meals. He takes a drink of wine.
A hollowed peace develops in your days. There was little else to do in Summerhall but pass the hours, eating and reading as the realm worsens around you. Maekar doesn’t oft seek your company, and you do not seek his. You find that past the sad desperation of your reunion, each sight of him produces a painful throb – a raw wound that tears open at each glimpse of Baelor in his face.
Maekar’s hair and complexion were paler, but he held Baelor’s length of nose, a similar distance between the eyes. His mannerisms become nearly taunting – a slumped set of shoulders when seated in his chair, a repetitive turn of the ring that now lives upon his finger.
When a septa storms into the dining hall one evening to rant about a garden snake hidden in Rhae’s dressers, Maekar turns his head to look at someone who is no longer there.
It becomes a maddening game, searching for echoes of Baelor lingering along the man who crushed his skull. You become convinced that if you blur your eyes enough– you may be able to see your husband staring back, his hair simply turned white from an age he’d been denied.
And it is a sad shock to find Maekar feels faintly the same.
“You remind me of him,” Maekar says one night, walking you to your chambers with a slight limp, cane in hand. “It’s fucking unbearable.”
Something in his leg seems to have healed wrong from the trial, but you make no mention of the frailty that has settled over him. He was a man known for his strength and the… virility of his body. You weren’t sure what would remain if that was stripped away from him as well.
“How so?”
“You frown like him, when you’re frustrated with me. Or thinking. And you say things that are unknown from common reading. There are tomes in Baelor’s collection… that were in his collection, that do not exist elsewhere. Gods know what you read in that tower of his that a maester might spill himself over.”
You blink, thinking of such books – and how you’d not truly read them. Baelor sometimes liked to speak what he was reading aloud, line for line when he’d found a passage he thought might catch your interest.
Often, you were happy to listen. Simply contented by the sound of his voice– that of which you would not hear again.
Arriving at your chamber door, Maekar hovers for a moment too long. You think perhaps he might request entry– a strange mock of chivalry, whereas in the past he’d simply barge in, an abrupt intrusion upon your life.
But he does neither. He simply instructs you to rest, before taking his leave.
–
The distance you cling to breaks when you wake terrified in the night. Eyes snapping open, your heart slams, the thrum of a startled rabbit— running, running, running through your chest. You’d dreamt of burning– of dragonfire melting your skin and hair and eyes as you’d knelt before a wet scaled maw.
You cannot move. Your eyes scan the expanse of your chambers, thinly lit by a trail of moonlight. Bed curtains cast the place beyond your blanket covered feet in a purple haze, the darkness pressing through. Someone stands in the far corner. Baelor’s back faces you. Something gives, falling wet from head to floor — you scream.
In a complexity of repulsion and longing, your body throws itself closer to him, a sudden lurch of your torso that has you clawing over coverings to get closer. You toss the bed curtains aside, clutching your stomach —
You are alone.
–
Summerhall was dark at night, the same as any other castle or keep. With a candle burning low in your hand, you wander through empty corridors lit by distant lanterns overhead, getting lost in a maze of unfamiliar halls. You’d thrown a heavy robe over your night shift in an attempt to conceal yourself, but you knew of no hidden tunnels to hide your search for Maekar’s chambers.
Coming upon what you believe to be his door, you slip in without knocking– feeling an intruder, no better than a brigand or thief. Inside, it is equally dark. And strangely cold. No fire lights the hearth, and the furnishings look to be the familiar black and red of his house, though it was hard for your eyes to tell.
Walking softly to Maekar’s bed, you kill your candle’s flame and set it aside. There were no bedcurtains to obscure him from your sight. He simply laid beneath a pile of furs and dark coverings, a thick bundle where only the top of his hair peeked out– splayed white against pillows.
Driven by lingering fears and a sad wish to be held, you feel no more than a girl as you slip beneath his covers, casting your robe to the side to land against the floor. Different from Baelor, he seems a heavy sleeper. He does not move as you curl your body towards him. Even when you nudge at his chest, finding it bare, he does not stir.
“Maekar,” you whisper.
His eyes remain closed, frowning even in sleep. With a sigh, you carefully reach to clutch the curved muscle of his shoulder, shaking him slight. Baelor startled awake often, seeming sometimes to believe himself awakened in his tent at Redgrass Field. Maekar never woke the same when you’d slept between him and his brother– and yet you remained cautious.
“Maekar–”
With a groan, he rubs a hand over his face, smoothing away a few strands of hair that had fallen into disarray against his forehead. His pale eyes blink open. They narrow at you.
“Have your senses left you? Why in the hells have you sought me out at this hour?” he asks, voice hoarse with sleep.
Face heating, you withdraw your hand from him, letting it rest between the space laid between you. “I… I dreamt of Baelor in my chambers. I saw him. I do not wish to be alone.”
Quiet for a moment, Maekar heaves himself up with a groan, settling to lean back against a pile of pillows behind him. The furs and covers fall into a pool at his waist, exposing a broad chest and stomach covered with a pale trail of hair. Carefully, you reach to run a hand through it along his chest, comforted by the way it feels beneath your palm.
Maekar releases a hiss of breath, the thick muscles of his chest twitching. “... And did my brother’s ghost tell you to flee to my bed?”
“No,” your eyes shift to a dark corner of his chambers, your hand tightening on his chest. You do not wish to tell him the full truth of what you’d seen of Baelor– not in the immediate aftermath of the trial, and not now. That at least was something you could spare him. “He just stood there,” you say instead. “I witnessed worse in King’s Landing and on the road. I don’t know why it frightened me so.”
“What state was the Red Keep in? I’ve received ravens from… the new Hand. But the notes they carry are short. With little mention of what I suspect to be the truth.”
“I’d not like to speak of it. Let the reports be enough.”
With a sigh, Maekar raises a hand to hover over your hair– before he seems to reconsider. Leaning forward, he grips beneath your upper arms, dragging you up along the bed to rest over his chest- years of battle-built muscles softened at rest, reduced to a pillow for your head.
Shutting your eyes, you settle your cheek against Maekar's chest. The rapid thrum of his heart lulls you to sleep.
–
It is still dark when you wake again, curled on your side. Wrapped up and feeling warm, your senses come to you slowly. An arm curves over your waist, a weight rests at your back. Without thought, you chase the warmth, arching yourself back into it- nestling closer. A sigh comes from behind you, a rough hand splays over your stomach, the other hikes your shift up over your breasts. A hardness thrusts along the curve of your cheeks, rocking slight against your smallclothes.
“Baelor—” you whisper.
A pause. The movement stills.
“He’s left us.”
You killed him, you think of snapping— but you do not. The words would be said in anger, spit from your mouth to push Maekar away.
Your stomach lurches. A sick guilt settles over you, thicker than the furs and blankets layered atop the bed. It is a sharp knife, twisting in your chest, to find you still want the man laid behind you. When Maekar begins to pull away, you throw a hand behind you— stopping him with a grip along his hip.
“I miss him.” Your mouth trembles. “Do not leave me as well.”
Quietly, Maekar settles back against the bed. The hand resting on your stomach slips lower— stilling at the edge of your smallclothes. Eyes clenching shut, you roll your hips back towards him.
His hand slips beneath the thin fabric, nudging between your thighs. The metal of Baelor’s signet ring feels warm pressed your skin, but Maekar’s fingers spread over your heat, the sound slick to your ears.
Maybe I should have burned, you think.
“Gods curse me,” Maekar mutters against the back of your neck, the crop of his beard coarse on your skin. “You hold every right to want me dead. Cast me aside— say that you hate me—”
“I won’t,” you whisper, chasing his touch. “I don’t.”
Maekar’s fingers press into your cunt, a tight stretch that chases words from your tongue. He grinds them into you then, and you can feel him at your back— thrusting roughly against you, leaking at the tip.
With a whimper, you plead for more, simply wanting the ache inside you to be gone. Maekar withdraws. You begin to protest— a cry on your lips, feeling a needy, sad whelping thing- but then you’re being turned over, sprawled flat as Maekar kneels over you.
His pale hair is mussed from sleep, falling into his eyes. You reach to push the strands away from his face, tucking them behind his ears. With a muffled groan, Maekar takes your legs— wrapping them around his waist as he settles on his knees.
“My leg is fucked,” he frowns. “No idea what blow caused it during the trial, but the bone aches now. Deep along my thigh— I'm unsure of how long I’ll last like this.”
Blinking, you move to run your hand along his lower stomach— down and along further, until you’re pressing your palm into the side of his thigh.
Maekar moans.
Your hand stays there, rubbing over the tense muscles of his leg, only parting briefly as he pushes his loose breeches down enough to free his cock. Hard and leaking from the tip, it presses against the thick thatch of hair spread along his stomach.
Tugging your smallclothes to the side, Maekar guides himself with a hand to notch against your cunt— then he’s pushing in, a slow stretch that has your eyes fluttering.
Carefully, one of his hands moves to rest over your stomach. The other grips a handful of your breast, tweaking and teasing a nipple between calloused fingers until the flesh is peaked. The pace he sets is deep, but slow. A desperate clinging grind against each other, your legs squeeze around his waist as Maekar ruts his cock into your heat. You feel his ball press against you briefly, only for his hips to pull away short and thrust back in.
Pulsing around him, your hands wander— gripping the strong bulk of his legs, his thighs, pressing harder against each tense muscles that elicits a groan or broken sigh.
When his hand slips from your stomach to rub at where your cunt spreads around him, you break. Your pleasure feels sharp and good and desperate, a terrible wave that causes tears to leak from the corner of your eyes. And Maekar fucks you through it, his hips thrusting harder— his composure long abandoned as his hair falls back into his face.
“Say that you’ll stay with me,” Maekar demands suddenly, voice low and broken. “That you’ll swear yourself to me, just as you did Baelor.”
“I will.”
Maekar nods, his eyes falling shut. Carefully, he leans over you, pressing his mouth over yours— a rough scrape of his beard along your skin. As he licks into your mouth, you swallow his moans- strangely vocal for a man who carried himself so terribly. Then his hips are rolling into you, filling you with each thrust, a rapid ruined rhythm. Maekar buries himself to the hilt, twitching and moaning with his release, any pain he might have had in his leg forgotten or ignored.
As you each catch your breath, you watch one another. Staring at him in the dark, you're again struck by the faint resemblances to Baelor. The prominent veins along his arms, the bob of his throat as he swallows thickly.
The comparison is unfair. You let Baelor slip away.
A sadness settles over you from where your thoughts trail, and Maekar seems able to read it on your face. Moving to settle back atop the bed with a tired groan, he pulls you carefully to retake your place along chest.
With his arms a comforting weight over your back, you let your exhaustion take you once again.
—
In your dreams, Baelor is whole. You sit across the long table in his tower’s solar, watching him dig through a stack of parchment. He speaks of simple matters- of taxes and council. He asks how you're faring, glancing to you with mismatched eyes. There is candlelight around him, ink on his hands. He'll be gone when you wake.
So you linger.
—