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The change did not come at once. Mariah had felt it all along. But when she saw it, she was stunned, for it was so thorough that she could not imagine how she could have missed its development. Caught in the excitement of the new life growing inside her, so soon after her wedding, she had failed to anticipate the inevitable.
Her slender grace was gone. Instead, she felt like a giant overripe water-melon, waddling after Daeron like… like something that she could not even describe! But what she was increasingly losing in figure and grace, she was compensating with sweat all over her body and a line of hair all the way down her belly. Day by day, it got darker and she had to stifle the impulse to push Daeron’s hand away when he curved his palm around the roundness of her belly – something that had brought her some tentative joy in the beginning, a pale hope of accord and happiness when they had both been taken by the newness of this life inside her and the changes it brought. Of course, this has been before her belly got so very big and the line so very dark that Daeron could not fail to see it if he had the chance. She would not give it to him: she took care that he only saw her covered and even in the lovemaking that was still comfortable for her in this new body, she would turn in a way that would not let him see.
Morning sickness was something terrible. In fact, it was all day sickness. She had vomited on Daeron a number of times already and she wanted to hide somewhere when he held her hair back at night as she leaned over the basin they held at their bedside. She no longer had anything to do with the lovely girl he had fallen in love with.
It felt weird and vulnerable to suddenly be the less attractive one in the pair. He could not be attracted to her as she was. He simply could not. And the very notion of this made her feel bereft, now that had started looking at him with the eyes of desire. Finally, hesitantly, but she had. His frail constitution no longer bothered her. The twist of his spine drew her eye not as a deformity but because it gave him pain which disturbed her. The smell of him had become like the most exquisite perfume for her. She dared not think what she smelled like to him.
“There is no need to rise so early,” he told her one day as she rubbed the sleep off her eyes and she did not know if it was concern for her and the babe, or simple reluctance to continue the practice that had delighted him so, her willingness to rise at dawn with him so that they would have another hour together. An hour of stolen happiness. Just a few months ago. When Mariah thought of it now, she realized how happy they had been. How happy she had been, at least. Now she could feel what he must have felt, the sickening feeling that she was not enough, and she liked it not.
Whispers followed them everywhere, eyes measuring her bulging belly up and down as people wondered in whisper who would be the young Prince’s mistress, now that his Dornish wife had become unappealing to him. Oh, the Princess will likely choose her herself, others replied. Don’t you know what they’re like in Dorne?
Mariah remembered all too well the rumours in Dorne that her goodfather had left in his wake! Not a single woman had been spared his attentions and Daeron was his son, although Mariah had the feeling that Daeron liked his father even less than she did.
Well, after all, what would a woman or three matter when Mariah could no longer meet and sate him as his wife which would happen soon? The answer surprised her: everything. She did not like to part with things that were hers and she had never given a thought to the notion that Daeron was hers. It had been a given because she knew that he loved her. She wanted him, mind, body, and soul. She wanted the calmness of his nature, the quiet steadiness of his presence, the way his eyes filled with wonder whenever the child moved beneath his hand. She wanted his concern and longing for her – although she did not like it at all when she was the one at the longing end!
It was just a matter of time before he found someone else. She tried to tell herself that it only concerned her because she’d lose her most steadfast ally in this foreign, hostile court when Daeron got carried away with someone else but at night, as she lay awake and waited for him, startling at every sound, she knew that was not it.
The parade of young ladies started soon enough. All of them lovely, all of them graceful… all of them like Mariah in the days before the babe swelled her up, in fact. They were all daughters of minor families who would benefit much by having a daughter in Daeron’s bed.
“Do you have to parade them right in front of me?” Mariah snapped one day, the respect due to her goodmother finally abandoning her because the Seven knew that if she was supposed to show deference to the woman who had given birth to Daeron, this same woman was supposed to sympathize with her discreetly over men’s nature, not procuring women for her son!
Naerys did not look offended or indignant. She even smiled. “It isn’t me,” she said. “And anyway, it isn’t about the girls at all. It’s about the man taking them to what they offer or not. Why do you think they have stopped trying this with my lord father, the Hand?”
Because he kept faith with one woman, Mariah knew. Had been for years. She had never seen the lady but she knew she was no longer young and while lovely, she could not compare to many of the young and beautiful women. We could have what the two of them have, she realized. Only better because I can share all aspects of Daeron’s life openly. Only later did she wonder when she had started dreaming of a life with Daeron as being one of happiness. It had slipped her notice.
Now, if only he rejected the temptation…
One day, as she accompanied her goodmother on a visit to the Maidenvault that she had been unable to refuse, Mariah glimpsed a sight that made her heart ache. High above her, on a spacious terrace, Elaena Targaryen was whispering something, leaning against Daeron’s shoulder.
Daeron was smiling.
“I wish to be only with you,” Daeron said suddenly this night and Mariah cast him a look of surprise, followed by mortification. Had she been so obvious? Had everyone seen her jealousy?
“Then, you’ll have to wait,” she said steadily, refusing to admit that she needed this confirmation.
Daeron immediately rose and stood by the bed and Mariah impulsively shook her head and grabbed his hands. “This isn’t what I meant at all, Daeron.”
But he was shaking with silent laughter and Mariah smiled despite herself. He did know how to make her laugh and she cherished this in him. “You know what they’re going to say about the Dornish witch who cannot contain her jealousy and wants to turn her husband into a devoted slave…”
“I imagine it won’t be this different from what they say about this puny Targaryen prince who doesn’t even have the needs of a full-bodied man and prefers staying with his Dornish lady, rather than find a substitute.”
“Does he?” Mariah asked holding her breath as he lay back against the pillows where he belonged.
Her voice was so soft that she was not sure he had heard her at all. Impulsively, she reached out and stroked his cheek. As lightly as he had spoken, she knew that this kind of rumour, this accusation in weakness had always trailed him by here, in the court he had been born in. For the first time, she realized it might be painful for him to bear. Why had she never given this a thought?
Because she had never seen him as weak.
This notion stroke her as lightning. Even when she had first seen his spine, she had never seen it as a mark of weakness, albeit it had been, admittedly, only because she had been focused on what it would mean for her. When she had realized that he was in pain, she had only thought about it on physical, body level, and wondered what she could do to relieve it. Weak? The one who had never, not once, demanded something of her even in their most intimate moments – when he had never shown the true strength of his own affection for her because he had known that it would burden her with her inability to reciprocate? Weak?!
Even now, at the fierce drive to cut every vile tongue, she did not feel that her protectiveness made him weak. It was a conundrum that she could not solve right now.
“Do you?” she asked again and he looked at her, confused, before remembering what they had been talking about.
He nodded. “I do.”