Chapter Text
Rhaena wakes in the middle of the night after Father’s wedding to Princess Rhaenyra, her nose chilled through from the cold air. Dragonstone is only a pebble's throw from Driftmark, and they are in the middle of summer besides, but here it seems the air is forever damp and heatless.
The darkness is too quiet. It has been too quiet ever since the evil prince stole Vhagar, and Rhaena misses hearing her screeching cries, mourning for Mother. Now her mother’s dragon no longer mourns. She’s forgotten about her.
More than anything, Rhaena wishes she had done as the evil prince had said and claimed Vhagar before he had the chance. Father said as much, when he explained to them that dragons do not truly belong to anyone—that Prince Aemond didn’t really steal her—and Rhaena can’t help feeling that, in this case, she’s once again been a disappointment.
First Vhagar, now Father. Are Grandfather and Grandmother to forget about Mother too, one by one, until she and Baela are the only ones who still remember how Mother sent them to bed with spiced milk and kisses on the head, and was a heap of charred bones by morning?
She looks over at her sister’s still, sleeping form in the other bed. Baela never wakes in the middle of the night. Maybe Rhaena will be left alone to mourn, one day soon.
Despite the cold, it’s getting hard to breathe in the bedchamber. She wraps herself in her blanket and hops from the bed, hissing at the cold stone beneath her feet as she scrambles for her slippers. On the way out, she lifts the lid of her egg brazier as gently as she can to take a peak, enjoying the roll of heat coming from the simmering coals inside. Nothing, of course. It’s just a habit she has, to check on it.
Out in the hall, the few lit torches cast long shadows down the corridors, and Rhaena stands up on tip-toe to pluck one from the wall.
She is glad for her good memory as she makes her remembered way through the passageways, her footsteps silent. Even though it’s cold, there’s something solid and nice about the castle—steady—and when she emerges on the ramparts, the sea-soaked air smells of dragons and feels like a hug. Maybe this place won’t be all that bad to live in.
Squinting into the darkness, Rhaena just about makes out the path Jace pointed out to them as they stood outside that day, listening to the Valyrian priest drone on and on about glass and fire and souls as Father and Princess Rhaenyra lit candles and repeated prayers.
“That’s the dungeon tower at the end of that walkway,” Jace had whispered, and Baela wrinkled her nose. Indignant, Jace elbowed Baela in the ribs, making her sister dodge away laughing until Rhaena clapped a hand over her mouth to silence her. Baela is stupidly ticklish.
“Oi, don’t look like that,” Jace huffed. “It’s not like my mother is keeping anyone prisoner. When the night’s clear, if you go up to the rooftop, you can almost touch the stars.”
Baela’s frown faded then into delight, and Jace promised to take her up there some time. Baela had made fast friends with Luke and Jace the very first time they met years ago, and after the awkward, sad-coloured day at the funeral, they had settled back into their friendly rhythm, their company seeing to pull her sister out of the gloom. It had been harder for Rhaena to grow close to her cousins. It always is, and even now she does not think they enjoy her company as much. She never knows what to say, and everyone likes Baela better.
But even so, she can’t bring herself to begrudge Baela her open manner and ready smile—the easy way she makes everyone laugh and adore her. Often, Rhaena, too, likes her sister more than she likes herself.
Tonight, clouds hide even the moon, and so Rhaena does not think she’ll have company if she takes over Jace’s hiding spot for herself. Yet as she scrambles up to the rooftop, she sees right away that she is wrong. Another torch is glowing, and at once, it is too late to retreat unnoticed.
“Sorry,” Rhaena tells Jace, clutching her blanket to herself, her chest getting even tighter. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
She remembers how Jace smiled when he talked about this tower. She should have known it was his comfort place, like how the divot before her fireplace in Pentos was once hers. It’s only, Rhaena supposes she’s been so busy feeling sorry for herself that she forgot Jace has just lost his father.
Jace shrugs, expressionless, then slides over on his seat to make room.
“You’re not intruding. I did just show you how to get up here.”
She hesitates, but something tells her that he truly does not to mind, and so Rhaena fits herself next to him on the indent of the battlement, snug between his arm and the rough wall.
For a long time, they sit there and swing their feet against the stone, and Rhaena feels like she can breathe easily again. Finally, she says, hoping she’s not being a nuisance,
“I’m sorry about your father. I’ll miss Uncle Laenor too.”
Only a fortnight ago, Jace and Luke were the ones saying sorry for their loss. Rhaena doesn’t understand how this could have happened.
She didn’t know Uncle Laenor well, just as Jace and Luke did not know Mother. Every year, Mother brought her and Baela to visit on Driftmark—first on Vhagar, and then by ship—and though Uncle Laenor always came with Jace and Luke at the same time, they usually spent the visit with Grandfather, down at the shipyards or sailing, while Rhaena and Baela went riding and hunting in the whispering forest with Mother and Grandmother, or swam in the emerald coves where the sand felt fine as velvet under her toes.
Still, he wasn’t a stranger to her. She still remembers how Laenor told them stories by making shadow puppets on the wall with a candle in a darkened room. And she’s sorry that he’s dead. It almost feels like another part of Mother is gone from this earth and returned to the sea.
Jace freezes, and suddenly she realises she’s said the wrong thing. What did the evil prince call her cousins? What were all the grown-ups fighting about afterwards? How could she have forgotten? Stupid, stupid. She’s always letting her tongue run without consulting her brain.
Rhaena sneaks a glance up at Jace. His hair is so dark it almost disappears into the night, and in the firelight his pale face doesn’t give anything away. Only now does she truly think about what that word from the evil prince implied—bastard—and only now does she notice how different her cousins’ colouring is from hers and Baela’s. It’s no wonder people talk, and Rhaena decides she hates that they do.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. It seems that’s all she’s capable of saying tonight, but Jace shakes his head and slouches over his knees, looking up at the bland, cloudy dark.
“It’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just…both my fathers are dead now.”
Now she’s the one who freezes.
“So…so it’s true?”
She knows she shouldn’t ask like some gawker at a mummer’s show—especially on something she has heard could mean treason—but again the words slip out. Jace doesn’t seem at all offended, only tired and resigned.
“My mother all but told me.”
His heavy sadness is making her own chest hurt again, and Rhaena scrambles for something comforting to say. Anything to pull him out of the gloom.
“But if she didn’t tell you outright, how can you be sure?”
“I asked her if Ser Harwin was my father. She told me I’m a Targaryen, and that’s all that matters.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
They return to their quiet kicking of the stone walls, but Rhaena’s mind is spinning, working out the logic. At last, she says, carefully,
“Your mother wasn’t wrong, though.”
“What?”
“I mean—” she starts fiddling with the silk ribbon lining her blanket—“It’s true. Nothing matters besides the fact that you’re a Targaryen.”
For the first time that night, Jace frowns, and Rhaena is almost relieved to see a real expression on his face.
“I just told you I’m a bastard, and my brothers are too. What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? It’s all that matters.”
Rhaena chews on her lip.
“Well…I don’t know how the laws work, but it’s Targaryens who sit on the Iron Throne, and no one can doubt you’re a Targaryen. No one can doubt the princess is your mother, and she’ll be queen one day. So…so really, why should it matter who your father was? You’re not inheriting anything from Uncle Laenor.”
Jace turns to her, his eyes like wine grapes in the torchlight. For a long moment he stares at her, and Rhaena doesn’t shy away, because something tells her he needs her to be sure about what she’s just said. Finally, he turns back to the sky.
“I’ve never thought of it that way.”
“Well, you should, and so should everyone else.”
He actually laughs then, but only a short laugh, cut off bluntly by his sullenness returning.
“But I don’t think the law works like that. And besides, Luke is set to inherit Driftmark, isn’t he? It matters who his father was.”
“Oh.” Rhaena had forgotten about that, but now she remembers the way Grandmother kissed them as they’d boarded their ship to Dragonstone, her face ashen from the shock of losing both her children in a matter of months. She remembers how Grandmother whispered to them, ‘you will come back soon, my dear, dear girls. Driftmark will always be your home. It will always belong to you.”
Something or other distracted her thoughts soon after, but now Rhaena realises what Grandmother meant. It suddenly fees like ice snakes are chewing at her gut and slithering up her back, and she decides it would be a terrible idea to tell Jace any of what Grandmother said.
But it’s almost like Jace can read her mind, because now he says,
“Mother would have my head for saying this, but maybe it would be better if Luke somehow doesn’t inherit Driftmark. He doesn’t want it anyway.”
Rhaena snaps her head to him so quickly that a sharp pang shoots up her neck.
“Why?” She can’t help sounding horrified. Who could not want Driftmark? Rhaena think it’s the most wonderful place in Westeros, even if she hasn’t seem much else of Westeros.
For a moment, Jace flashes a mischievous grin, and Rhaena is reminded of the boy who once put salamanders in Baela’s shoes.
“Peace, coz, he didn’t mean it as insult.” And just as quickly, the mirth is gone. “Grandfather told him Driftmark would be his one day, but Luke says if he’s on that throne, it means everyone else is dead.”
Rhaena wraps her blanket as tightly around herself as she can.
“He is not wrong, either,” she whispers.
“No, he isn’t. And what’s true for him is true for me.”
Before she thinks better of it, Rhaena’s hand shoots out from beneath her blanket and finds Jace’s, giving him what she hopes is a comforting squeeze. She didn’t really understand what it meant to die, before, but now death is all she can think about, haunting her through her days.
He doesn’t pull away, so she supposes that was the right thing to do.
Then, Rhaena says, thinking to change the subject,
“But I am surprised Luke came to this conclusion. He’s great and all, but I didn’t think he was this smart.”
Jace snorts a little too like a pig, and a laugh bubbles out of Rhaena so suddenly she almost chokes on it. And then they’re both cackling with laughter until tears come to their eyes, even though what she said was rather stupid and not at all funny. It feels good though. She can’t remember the last time she laughed this hard.
Finally, when they can catch their breaths and no longer fall back into fits when they look at each other, Jace turns back to the sky, but this time he has a pensive face on. The gloom seems to have parted like rain clouds after a storm, and Rhaena is glad for it. Their feet continue their swinging rhythm on the parapet.
“Luke actually is smart though, you know,” Jace says gently. “Not with books like you are, maybe, but in his own way. Sometimes, I wish I was more like Luke. I think I’d make Mother happier if I was more like Luke.”
Rhaena’s feet stop.
“What do you mean,” she whispers, feeling as if this secret was harder for Jace to tell her than the one about his father. She can hear Jace swallow.
“Just that Luke is her favourite.”
“How can that be? You’re her heir, Jace.”
He shrugs.
“Doesn’t matter. Luke’s the one who makes her smile all the time. Sometimes he even makes her laugh. I can’t do that. Actually, I think she gets sad when she looks at me too long.”
A hot burning is starting behind Rhaena’s nose. She can’t help but remember the way that sometimes, when she’s speaking with Father, his eyes blur and cloud as he looks at her, and it’s like he’s seeing through her to something that makes him beyond sad. Then he’ll find some excuse or other to leave her with nothing but a feather-light kiss, his mind already gone from her, and shut himself in his library to be alone all evening.
To her horror, the torch flames start to get blurry. She follows Jace’s example and stares up at the dark grey sky, hoping the tears flow back into her face.
“At least you’re a true Targaryen,” she hears herself say, and her voice is so thin and mousy she doesn’t think Jace hears her. But he does, and she can feel his frown.
“What are you saying? You and Baela are the ones who have the Targaryen name.”
Was he being thick on purpose?
“No, you know that’s not what I mean.” A surge of something clawing and angry rises out of nowhere—an echo of that impulse that drove her to charge at the evil prince when he walked in off Vhagar’s back and taunted her—and she hits the side of the battlement with her fist. Immediately, she regrets it, because the rough stones slice into her hand with a jagged stinging, and then she’s bleeding onto her blanket.
“Rhaena! What’d you go and do that for?”
Jace grapples for her hand, and because he’s older and a boy who’s learned how to fight, she doesn’t manage to keep it from him.
“Don’t make such a big deal of it. It’s just a scratch.” She tries to pull her hand back, but he won’t let her.
“Gods, this looks nasty.” The sleeve of his nightshirt over his fist, he brushes away the bits of sand and blows on it.
“Stop, Jace, ow! Jace, stop, you’re making it worse!”
With an exasperated sigh, he lets her hand go, and Rhaena cradles it to herself without even looking at it. That entire side of her hand is on fire, but she doesn’t feel the blood seeping through her blanket, so it can’t be so bad.
“I don’t understand,” he says now, spreading his hands. “What did I say, that you had to go hit your hand on the wall?”
Rhaena blows a loud breath out through her nose and doesn’t look at him. Maybe it’s because her hand has begun to throb, but she feels her ears and neck and face grow very prickly and hot. Or maybe she’s just never been this embarrassed in her life.
But Jace has shared two secrets with her tonight, so Rhaena chews on her lip, then says,
“I just meant that at least you don’t disappoint your mother. You have a dragon. You’ve proven you’re a Targaryen, no matter what the mean people say.”
“Oh.” His exasperation seems to melt away, and he plops back down beside her.
“You mean, you think you disappoint your father because you don’t have a dragon?”
“Not think. I know it.”
“But how? Did he tell you outright?”
Rhaena narrows her eyes and gives him a sideways look for turning her earlier question back on her.
“No, bt he doesn’t need to. He spends much more time with Baela, and she’s always making him laugh. And sometimes, I think he looks at me but sees right through me. Like his mind wanders elsewhere.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s disappointed in you. And even if he is, how do you know it’s because you don’t have a dragon?”
A hard, cold ball is forming in Rhaena’s stomach, and every word Jace says adds to its weight.
“You’re right,” she huffs, feeling her face burn despite the cold. “Maybe it’s not my lack of a dragon. Maybe I’m just unloveable as a person.”
“Oi, now you’re just putting words into my mouth and being ugly on purpose.”
She supposes she didn’t mean her bitter words, and she knows that’s not what Jace was trying to say. But that is another bad thing about her, isn’t it? That her tongue is faster than her mind, and she is forever saying things she wants to take back?
“Sorry,” Rhaena mutters, squeezing her still-throbbing hand to see if that will make the pain better. It makes it worse, so she shakes it out instead.
“It does feels ugly to think about. It’s just…Father would know what to do with me if I were different. If I had a dragon, for one. But also, if I was more…I don’t know. More like Baela.”
The words come easily, though it would usually be mortifying to admit this darkest secret. Something about Jace makes her feel like it’s safe to tell him anything.
“Father always told us learning Valyrian is our birthright. That it’s the most important thing to study. So I worked really hard on it, and I’m really good at speaking and even reading, much better than Baela. But all father did was smile at me for a second and call me his book worm, and now he tutors Baela in the evenings because he says her Valyrian needs extra work.”
That desire to smash her fist against the battlements reemerges, and she has to squeeze her hand again to remind herself that it already hurts.
“Mother always said Father was trying his best, but what does that even mean? Am I so awful that he has to try very hard to love me?”
All at once, the realisation explodes over her head that she’ll never again have her mother’s warm comfort, and the burning is fierce behind her nose. She’s never felt so alone in her life. The loneliness crumbles her insides like a stone fist, and her hasty words from before suddenly look too much like the truth. It’s unbearable, the ache in her throat, and this time she can’t hold in the hot tear that slides down her face.
Angrily, she wipes a corner of her blanket across her face, but the tears keep spilling.
A hand creeps to her shoulder, patting her gently.
“Come on, Rhaena,” says Jace, very quiet. “I know you don’t believe that about Uncle Daemon. Even I don’t believe it. And you’re not unlovable, not at all.”
“You don’t know me very well. How can you be so sure?”
She can feel him rolling his eyes, and somehow that makes some of the weight lessen and her throat ache less.
“I’ve known you since you were three,” he says in his imperious older-cousin tone. “I’d say I have a good idea. Besides, I’m not blind, you know? I saw Uncle Daemon and Grandmother Rhaenys fighting over who would get to keep you and Baela with them before we left Driftmark. If he really didn’t want to spend time with you, he’d have let you stay with Grandmother to placate her.
“And who knows, maybe Baela’s Valyrian does need extra work.”
“It definitely does, but that’s not…oh, I don’t know. Besides, it doesn’t matter how good my Valyrian is or how much history I read. I still don’t have a dragon. I’m beginning to think…” She takes a shuddering sigh. Though the tears have stopped threatening, the back of her throat still aches.
“I’m beginning to think that Mother was right. My egg's never going to hatch. And now I’ve missed the chance to claim Vhagar as she did.”
“But you’re on Dragonstone now,” Jace says. “There are so many dragons here, left by our ancestors, and if your egg doesn’t hatch, I know you’ll find one among them. You’re just as true a Targaryen as the rest of us. You’ll see.
When she looks up at him, his eyes are shiny with an excitement she can’t help feel in her own chest. Maybe things will be different now. Rhaena can’t help thinking, despite all the sadness, that yesterday was like the closing of one volume on her life and the opening of the next, so much so that she can smell the old leather covering the tomes.
“You’re not just saying that to be nice?”
“See, but why would I be nice to you if you were unloveable?”
She manages a watery smile then.
“Thanks Jace.”
He shrugs again.
The next silence stretches on for a long, long time—so long that Jace’s torch goes out, and he fumbles to get it relit. Unwilling to let Rhaena help with her scraped hand, he ends up smearing the soot and grease all over his, and when Rhaena can’t help snickering, he narrows his eyes and presses his entire filthy palm to her face.
“Hah,” he says as Rhaena gives an indignant shriek. “I’d like to see you laugh at me now. You look like a spotted cat.”
They settle back down, and Jace wipes at her face with his sleeve until he promises it’s clean. He studies her for a moment, then extends an awkward arm and pulls her into a half hug, his hand weirdly angled so he doesn’t get soot on her blanket.
Her blanket already has blood and dust on it though, so she makes him hug her properly, then hugs him back.
Mother may be gone, but perhaps Rhaena is not entirely without someone to whisper her deepest fears to.
“Rhaena, do you want to know something I’ve realised?”
“What’s that?”
“Just because my mother might like Luke more than me—it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me. It doesn’t even mean she loves me less than him. It just means she loves me differently, but enough, and that’s good enough for me.”
Rhaena sucks in so much air so quickly that her stomach knots and she starts to hiccup. Jace chokes back a laugh and knocks her hard on her back. But Rhaena isn’t laughing. She feels like she’s been looking through the bottom of a glass bottle all her life, and someone has suddenly swapped it for a normal glass pane. No longer does the world curve and warp to the shape of the bottle.
“Enough—hiccup—good enough…” she murmurs, staring at her hands in a trance. The little scrapes have stopped seeping blood now, and dried lines of rusty red cover that side of her hand, her skin already beginning to mend itself.
She doesn’t know how long she stares, Jace’s words churning in her head. But her hiccups have gone when she hears Jace speak again, and there is a smile in his voice.
“And who knows, maybe they’ll both laugh more now that they’ve married. They seem to really like each other.”
Rhaena wrinkles her nose. It was rather gross, watching Father and Princess Rhaenyra squeeze blood out of their hands and then drink it. It was even more gross when they were kissing with their mouths open.
She’s only ever seen Father give Mother little pecks on the lips—the same kind he gives her and Baela on the forehead before bed. She’s never seen anyone kiss like he kissed Princess Rhaenyra.
“You think? They looked like they wanted to eat each other.”
“That’s what I’m saying. They really like each other.”
She casts him a sideways look.
“You’re supposed to want to eat each other when you like someone? Who told you that?”
Jace makes a face and shrugs.
“I don’t know, but that’s just how it works when you’re a grown-up.”
“Oh, and you would know about grown-up things, would you?”
He draws himself up and peers down his nose at her.
“And why shouldn’t I? I’m a whole fifteen moons older than you.”
Rhaena rolls her eyes, but then heaves a sigh, because something tells her Jace is right. When Father first told them a few days ago that he would be marrying the princess, she had felt a pang of ugly, scary anger that he was replacing their mother so quickly. For a moment, she wanted to hit him.
Baela felt it worse than her, because she actually shouted at him what Rhaena only kept to her thoughts. But Father didn’t look angry, or even annoyed, and when Baela stopped shouting, he only said,
“No one is trying to replace your mother. It isn’t possible, it any case. But Rhaenyra needs me here, as her husband. And I hope one day the two of you can understand why it’s what I need to do.”
And there was an unreadable expression in his eyes that made Rhaena want to cry and laugh at the same time. At the wedding, she saw a sort of smile on Father’s face that she didn’t think she’d ever seen, and suddenly she couldn’t summon her anger anymore. Baela was not so easily convinced, but all evening, all Rhaena could feel was that dull pang that Father will forget their mother, now that he can truly be happy.
She finally leaves Jace to go back to bed when the faintest hints of blue begin to show through the clouded black of night. At the door to the stairs, she turns back and calls his name.
“Hm?”
“I'm...I'm sorry your fathers are dead," she says. "And I’m sorry my mother is dead. But I’m not sorry my father married your mother, Jace.” She wasn’t sure of that until this precise moment, but once the words are out, she decides they’re true.
He grins at her like he doesn’t know if he should, but wants to anyway. And though she thinks he looks very young in that moment, she still says,
“I’ve always wanted a big brother. I’m glad that’s you now.”
Back down the stairs she walks, the dying torch in her hand. When had her head and her eyelids gotten so heavy? When she turns the corner, she yawns so wide that her eyes squeeze shut and a tear rolls down her cheek, and she doesn’t at all notice the person coming 'round the other side until she crashes fully into him.
“Rhaena? What are—gods, give me that, you’re going to set the tapestries on fire.”
And suddenly Father is there, snatching the torch from her hand and catching her with his arm before she can fall back on her butt. Her head is spinning, and Rhaena can only watch Father’s confused frown as his eyes dart over her. Then he bursts out laughing.
“Oh, my girl,” he says, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “What’ve you got on your face?”